Quodid The Ultimate Quotation Repository

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

More about this quote

Tags:
war law apology authority crime taxes capital punishment
Permalink for this quote

About Emma Goldman

Portrait of Emma Goldman

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.

More quotations from Emma Goldman

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

More about this quote

Permalink for this quote

More quotations tagged with “taxes”