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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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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
Humans
Nations
Prey
Gone
Homeless
Poor
Individuals
Wretchedly
Hope
Army
Comprising
Individual
Crime
Squalor
America
Nation
Soulless
Live
Wealth
Avail
Human
Joy
Filth

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.
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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Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.
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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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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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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Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.
Emma Goldman
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Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society.
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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Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.
Emma Goldman
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The soldier's business is to take life. For that he is paid by the State, eulogized by political charlatans and upheld by public hysteria. But woman's function is to give life, yet neither the State nor politicians nor public opinion have ever made the slightest provision in return for the life woman has given.
Emma Goldman
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Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society.
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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If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.
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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The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people.
Emma Goldman
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Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
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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... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but itcan not do without that life.
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