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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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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
Whatever
Beautiful
Government
Human
Asserts
Humans
Expresses
Believe
Spite
Indeed
Fine

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality.
Emma Goldman
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Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of women is responsible for prostitution.
Emma Goldman
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We shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next door neighbors should hear that freeborn citizens dare not speak in the open.
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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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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The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.
Emma Goldman
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The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
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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... 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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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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Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.
Emma Goldman
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Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.
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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From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that.
Emma Goldman
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Patriotism is a menace to liberty.
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
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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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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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Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy one
Emma Goldman
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The State has no more existence than gods and devils have. They are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man, the individual, is the only reality. The State is but the shadow of man, the shadow of his opaqueness, of his ignorance and fear.
Emma Goldman