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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

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

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society.
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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I don't care if a man's theory for tomorrow is correct, I care if his spirit of today is correct.
Emma Goldman
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More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.
Emma Goldman
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Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor.... It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.
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.
Emma Goldman
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No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.
Emma Goldman
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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
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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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From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that.
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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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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I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
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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The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.
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 government will ... go on in the highly democratic method of conscripting American manhood for European slaughter.
Emma Goldman
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Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.
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
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People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
Emma Goldman