Quotes from Emma Goldman

'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.

all government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses.

I believe - indeed, I know - that whatever is fine and beautiful in the human expresses and asserts itself in spite of government, and not because of it.

The State is a term for the legislative and administrative machinery whereby certain business of the people is transacted, and badly so.

Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law?

Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move.

Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith?

Mother Liberty caresses with generous affections...[those] who, armed with the weapons of high-minded honesty,...have grasped that the freedom of each is rooted in the freedom of all.

Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.

It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future.

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion.

religion and morality are a much better whip to keep people in submission than even the club and the gun.

I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.' Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.

Love is it's own protection.

Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us.

Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.

It is essential that we realize once and for all that man is much more of a sex creature than a moral creature. The former is inherent, the other is grafted on.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

Politicians promise you heaven before election and give you hell after