Quote

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

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
Power
Birth
Dependence
Wells
Rest
Socialist
Well
Virtue
Virtues
Perpetuation
Mean
Society
Maintain
Demagogues
Never
Freedom
Myth
Coercion
Life
Free
Majority
Scheme
Individual
Mass
Schemes
Means
Authority
Anarchy

More quotes by Emma Goldman

Image
Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.
Emma Goldman
Image
Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society.
Emma Goldman
Image
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
Image
Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.
Emma Goldman
Image
The average mind is easily content with inherited and acquired things, or with the dicta of parents and teachers, because it is much easier to imitate than to create.
Emma Goldman
Image
The majority represent a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirror its own soul and mind poverty.
Emma Goldman
Image
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
Image
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.
Emma Goldman
Image
Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation.
Emma Goldman
Image
It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.
Emma Goldman
Image
What I believe is a process rather than a finality.
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
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
Morality and its victim, the mother - what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?
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
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
Image
... 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
Image
The State is a term for the legislative and administrative machinery whereby certain business of the people is transacted, and badly so.
Emma Goldman
Image
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
Image
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