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Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most.

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
Social
Even
Harass
Constituted
Sameness
Uniformity
Authority
Perhaps
Individual

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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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
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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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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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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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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 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.
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.
Emma Goldman
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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
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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.
Emma Goldman
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It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act.
Emma Goldman
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Man must get back to himself before he can learn his relation to his fellows. Prometheus chained to the Rock of Ages is doomed to remain the prey of the vultures of darkness. Unbind Prometheus, and you dispel the night and its horrors.
Emma Goldman
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John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
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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Yes, love is free it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
Emma Goldman
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The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and industrial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.
Emma Goldman
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... resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal.
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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The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.
Emma Goldman
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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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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.
Emma Goldman