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Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move.

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
Doe
Period
Ideas
Periods
Great
Weight
Every
Mass
Always
Move
Leaden
Effort
Bearers
Idea
Banner
Moving
Liberating

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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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
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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
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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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I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself to live for herself to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood.
Emma Goldman
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Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: 'To take is more blessed than to give' 'buy cheap and sell dear' 'one soiled hand washes the other.
Emma Goldman
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I believe - indeed, I know - that whatever is fine and beautiful in the human expresses and asserts itself in spite of government, and not because of it.
Emma Goldman
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The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.
Emma Goldman
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Success achieved by the most contemptible means cannot but destroy the soul. ... It helps to cover up the inner corruption and gradually dulls one's scruples, so that those who begin with some high ambition cannot, even if they would, create anything out of themselves.
Emma Goldman
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The triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond.
Emma Goldman
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ANARCHISM:The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.
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
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so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.
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
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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.
Emma Goldman
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Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future.
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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In modern capitalism economic exploitation rather than political oppression is the real enemy of the people.
Emma Goldman
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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
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... woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man haslong overcome the superstitions that still engulf women.
Emma Goldman
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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