Quote

Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against society, that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship.

Emma Goldman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Society
Continuous
Individual
Individuals
States
Worship
Even
Majority
Civilization
Groups
Struggle
Hypnotized
State
Subdued

More quotes by Emma Goldman

Image
True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged new ones.
Emma Goldman
Image
We shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next door neighbors should hear that freeborn citizens dare not speak in the open.
Emma Goldman
Image
Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia.
Emma Goldman
Image
Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move.
Emma Goldman
Image
In the face of this approaching disaster, it behooves men and women not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them.
Emma Goldman
Image
If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right!
Emma Goldman
Image
statutory regulations, legislative enactments, constitutional provisions, are invasive. They never yet induced man to do anything he could and would not do by virtue of his intellect or temperament, nor prevented anything that man was impelled to do by the same dictates.
Emma Goldman
Image
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
Image
religion and morality are a much better whip to keep people in submission than even the club and the gun.
Emma Goldman
Image
The majority cannot reason it has no judgement. It has always placed its destiny in the hands of others it has followed its leaders even into destruction. The mass has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth.
Emma Goldman
Image
More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.
Emma Goldman
Image
The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.
Emma Goldman
Image
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
Image
Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.
Emma Goldman
Image
Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
Emma Goldman
Image
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
Image
Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.
Emma Goldman
Image
Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.
Emma Goldman
Image
Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals.
Emma Goldman
Image
Pettiness separates breadth unites. Let us be broad and big.
Emma Goldman