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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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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
Mind
Easily
Things
Average
Inherited
Parents
Easier
Imitate
Teacher
Acquired
Parent
Conformity
Create
Teachers
Much
Content

More quotes by 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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Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.
Emma Goldman
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... the modern drama, operating through the double channel of dramatist and interpreter, affecting as it does both mind and heart,is the strongest force in developing social discontent, swelling the powerful tide of unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition.
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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To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future.
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 history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.
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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Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion.But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.
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 spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.
Emma Goldman
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It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.
Emma Goldman
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In the true sense one's native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.
Emma Goldman
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readiness,' far far from assuring peace, has at all times and in all countries been instrumental in precipitating armed conflicts.
Emma Goldman
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Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soulless army of human prey.
Emma Goldman
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So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as 'education'.
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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The benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism exist only on paper painted in glowing colors by Bolshevist propaganda.
Emma Goldman
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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.
Emma Goldman
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Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
Emma Goldman