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We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.

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
Citizens
Opposed
Joy
Claim
Violence
Flying
Spasms
Upon
Claims
Projecting
Peace
Machines
Dynamite
Hate
Loving
Bloodshed
People
Americans
Helpless
Possibility
Bombs

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
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The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.
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Art is a part of the rebellion against the realities of its unfulfilled desire.
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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.
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What I prized most was freedom, freedom to do my work, to give myself spontaneously and not out of duty or by command. I could not submit to such demands rather would I choose the path of a homeless wanderer yes, even go without love.
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Predigested food' should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their original sense of judgment.
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Direct action is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.
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Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very uniqueness, separateness and differentiation make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.
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all government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses.
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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.
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Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.
Emma Goldman
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No, it is not because woman is lacking in responsibility, but because she has too much of the latter that she demands to know how to prevent conception.
Emma Goldman
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Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.
Emma Goldman
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If elections really changed anything, they would be outlawed.
Emma Goldman
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If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right!
Emma Goldman
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Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.
Emma Goldman
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The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class.
Emma Goldman
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Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.
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.
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No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.
Emma Goldman