Quotes from Emma Goldman

Love needs to protection; it is its own protection.

Mais les dogmes bolcheviks et l'étatisme communiste ont constitué un obstacle fatal aux activités créatrices du peuple. La caractéristique fondamentale de la psychologie bolchevik était sa méfiance envers les masses.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood — a truly free society.

Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society.

Life without an ideal is spiritual death.

The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land.

All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.

Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

Jealousy is the very reverse of understanding, of sympathy, and of generous feeling. Never has jealousy added to character, never does it make the individual big and fine.

The average mind is easily content with inherited and acquired things, or with the dicta of parents and teachers, because it is much easier to imitate than to create.

... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but itcan not do without that life.

[Woman's] life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurred her conception of the meaning of equality.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.

The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.

Why waste your life working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day, when a woman could earn a decent wage by selling her body instead?

Christ and his teachings are the embodiment of submission, of inertia, of the denial of life; hence responsible for the things done in their name.

How to raise this dead level of theistic belief is really a matter of life and death for all denominations. Therefore their tolerance; but it is a tolerance not of understanding; but of weakness.

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting.

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.

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.