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How long would authority ... exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen.

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
Soldiers
Would
Willingness
Soldier
Mass
Jailers
Exist
Hangman
Authority
Jailer
Become
Policemen
Long

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The State is a term for the legislative and administrative machinery whereby certain business of the people is transacted, and badly so.
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[Woman's] life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurred her conception of the meaning of equality.
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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.
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The government will ... go on in the highly democratic method of conscripting American manhood for European slaughter.
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When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood — a truly free society.
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religion and morality are a much better whip to keep people in submission than even the club and the gun.
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so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.
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Patriotism is a menace to liberty.
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What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!
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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.
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I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.
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Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom or the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power.
Emma Goldman
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The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.
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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Pettiness separates breadth unites. Let us be broad and big.
Emma Goldman
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The most violent element in society is ignorance.
Emma Goldman
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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.
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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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.
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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