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

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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The government will ... go on in the highly democratic method of conscripting American manhood for European slaughter.
Emma Goldman
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religion and morality are a much better whip to keep people in submission than even the club and the gun.
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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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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It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.
Emma Goldman
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Mother Liberty caresses with generous affections...[those] who, armed with the weapons of high-minded honesty,...have grasped that the freedom of each is rooted in the freedom of all.
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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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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... 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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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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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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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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Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
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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the function of militarism is to kill. It cannot live except through murder.
Emma Goldman
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Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.
Emma Goldman
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If elections really changed anything, they would be outlawed.
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
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statutory regulations, legislative enactments, constitutional provisions, are invasive. They never yet induced man to do anything he could and would not do by virtue of his intellect or temperament, nor prevented anything that man was impelled to do by the same dictates.
Emma Goldman
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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