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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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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
True
Exacting
Men
Rigid
Necessity
Forced
Developed
Army
Usually
Enlist
Force
Conscription

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Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.
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The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow.
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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.
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The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and industrial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.
Emma Goldman
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There is no such thing as a good government. There never was. There can't be.
Emma Goldman
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... woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.
Emma Goldman
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Free love? as if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love.
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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Peter Kropotkin...was recognized by friend and foe as one of the greatest minds...of the nineteenth century...The lucidity and brilliance of his mind combined with his warm-heartednes s into the harmonious whole of a fascinating and gracious personality.
Emma Goldman
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Politicians promise you heaven before election and give you hell after
Emma Goldman
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Some people never seem to learn from experience. No matter how often they had seen the lion devour the lamb, they continued to cling to the hope that the nature of the beast might change. If only the lion could get to know the lamb better, they argued, or talk matters over.
Emma Goldman
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Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith?
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