Quote

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.

Emma Goldman

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Emma Goldman
Age: 70 †
Born: 1869
Born: June 27
Died: 1940
Died: May 14
Anarchist
Autobiographer
Feminist
Journalist
Lecturer
Nurse
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Political Activist
Political Philosopher
Publisher
Kovno
Everything
Surface
Persistently
Looks
Entire
Germ
Way
Works
Germs
Expression
Poisonous
Whatever
Vigorous
Strong
Doomed
May
Fabric
Look
Poison
Puritanism

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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True, we have no conscription that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force-necessity.
Emma Goldman
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Morality and its victim, the mother - what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?
Emma Goldman
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... 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.
Emma Goldman
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I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful they will save me lots of work.
Emma Goldman
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The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.
Emma Goldman
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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.
Emma Goldman
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What I believe is a process rather than a finality.
Emma Goldman
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If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
Emma Goldman
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The State has no more existence than gods and devils have. They are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man, the individual, is the only reality. The State is but the shadow of man, the shadow of his opaqueness, of his ignorance and fear.
Emma Goldman
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To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
Emma Goldman
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In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, womans premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, until death doth part.
Emma Goldman
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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.
Emma Goldman
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Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.
Emma Goldman
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You have opened up the prison gates of my womanhood. And all the passion that was unsatisfied in for me so many years, leaped into a wild reckless storm boundless as the sea.
Emma Goldman
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Politicians promise you heaven before election and give you hell after
Emma Goldman
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The soldier's business is to take life. For that he is paid by the State, eulogized by political charlatans and upheld by public hysteria. But woman's function is to give life, yet neither the State nor politicians nor public opinion have ever made the slightest provision in return for the life woman has given.
Emma Goldman
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The benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism exist only on paper painted in glowing colors by Bolshevist propaganda.
Emma Goldman
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In modern capitalism economic exploitation rather than political oppression is the real enemy of the people.
Emma Goldman
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Some people never seem to learn from experience. No matter how often they had seen the lion devour the lamb, they continued to cling to the hope that the nature of the beast might change. If only the lion could get to know the lamb better, they argued, or talk matters over.
Emma Goldman
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The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.
Emma Goldman