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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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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
Pernicious
Dictator
Tyranny
Majority
Terrible
Class
Power

More quotes by Emma Goldman

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It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.
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.
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... resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal.
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No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
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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Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.
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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What I believe is a process rather than a finality.
Emma Goldman
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all government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses.
Emma Goldman
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The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.
Emma Goldman
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Lack of fairness to an opponent is essentially a sign of weakness.
Emma Goldman
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Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very uniqueness, separateness and differentiation make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.
Emma Goldman
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Pettiness separates breadth unites. Let us be broad and big.
Emma Goldman
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If elections really changed anything, they would be outlawed.
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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If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
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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Anarchism...stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral.
Emma Goldman
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Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move.
Emma Goldman
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Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation.
Emma Goldman