Emma Goldman

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Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Lithuanian-born anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

Quotes from Emma Goldman

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

—Emma Goldman

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politics ignorance society violence

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Every government, whatever its form, character, or color — be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi, or Bolshevist — is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.

—Emma Goldman

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politics change government conservatism Nazi monarchy

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As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweatshop, department store, or office?

—Emma Goldman

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All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

—Emma Goldman

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cowardice fighting Wars draft

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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.

—Emma Goldman

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war law apology authority crime taxes capital punishment

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Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

—Emma Goldman

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crime energy

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Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in a like manner, of course.

—Emma Goldman

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Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

—Emma Goldman

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love power magic

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I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

—Emma Goldman

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flowers roses diamonds

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Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.

—Emma Goldman

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strength wealth

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Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only "order" that governments have ever maintained. True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is nonexistent; hence social harmony is but a myth. . . . Thus the entire arsenal of government — laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons — is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the most antagonistic elements in society.

—Emma Goldman

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If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

—Emma Goldman

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So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.

—Emma Goldman

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law crime corruption

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