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
Strong
Doomed
May
Fabric
Look
Poison
Puritanism
Everything
Surface
Persistently
Looks
Entire
Germ
Way
Works
Germs
Expression
Poisonous
Whatever
Vigorous

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as 'education'.
Emma Goldman
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... woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.
Emma Goldman
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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.
Emma Goldman
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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.
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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As to a thorough eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a complete transvaluation of all accepted values--especially the moral ones--coupled with the abolition of industrial slavery.
Emma Goldman
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... woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man haslong overcome the superstitions that still engulf women.
Emma Goldman
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Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.
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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The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.
Emma Goldman
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the function of militarism is to kill. It cannot live except through murder.
Emma Goldman
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It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.
Emma Goldman
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The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and industrial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.
Emma Goldman
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Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society.
Emma Goldman
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The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.
Emma Goldman
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Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
Emma Goldman
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The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.
Emma Goldman
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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.
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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[Woman's] life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurred her conception of the meaning of equality.
Emma Goldman