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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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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
Term
State
Business
Transacted
Certain
Administrative
States
Legislative
Government
Whereby
People
Machinery
Badly

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partiy with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy.
Emma Goldman
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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.
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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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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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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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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If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
Emma Goldman
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Patriotism is a menace to liberty.
Emma Goldman
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Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested - for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.
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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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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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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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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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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... 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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True, we have no conscription that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force-necessity.
Emma Goldman
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Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.
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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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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A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.
Emma Goldman