Best Emma Goldman Quotes

Emma Goldman Quotes About Feminism, Son of Anarchy, Love, Revolution, Indonesia, Dance, Success & Poems! As a result of her participation in activist organizations, writing, and public speaking, Emma Goldman gained much notoriety within the anarchist community and became a well-known revolutionary. Emma worked for the emancipation of women, seeking their independence and rights in society, and she was successful in her efforts. Emma Goldman’s birth took place in Lithuania on June 27th, 1869.

As an activist, she got a reputation for being a troublemaker because she used both her lips and her writing to stir up trouble in various communities, social movements, and governments. Her lectures, publications, opinions, sayings, and comments addressed a broad range of topics, including marriage, freedom of expression, free love, incarceration, homosexuality, capitalism, atheism, and militarism.

Goldman spent a significant amount of time behind bars to spread the word about her ideals during her career. As a result of her speaking engagements against the “Soviets” around the “Axis countries,” she was denied entry into many of those nations.

After returning to the United States, she upset both the Nazis and the communists by speaking out against communism and Nazism to anarchists. She made the trip to Spain to provide her support to the anarchists and workers in Barcelona. Her passing occurred on May 4th, 1940. Her public discourse and writings have gained notoriety as sources of current memorable statements and views. Even though her obstinacy was scary, she never gave up the struggle for independence and freedom.

Best Emma Goldman Quotes

1. “The most violent element in society is ignorance.” ~ Emma Goldman
2. “People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.” ~ Emma Goldman
3. “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
4. “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” ~ Emma Goldman
5. “Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism… Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.” ~ Emma Goldman
6. “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
7. “Men and women … do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labor politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you in leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.” ~ Emma Goldman
8. “The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.” ~ Emma Goldman
9. “Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals.” ~ Emma Goldman
10. “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
11. “The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.” ~ Emma Goldman
12. “A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.” ~ Emma Goldman
13. “Art is a part of the rebellion against the realities of its unfulfilled desire.” ~ Emma Goldman
14. “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
15. “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
16. “The State, every government whatever its form, character or color – be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or bolshevik – is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.” ~ Emma Goldman
17. “Out of the chaos, the future emerges in harmony and beauty.” ~ Emma Goldman
18. “Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political personalities, then it is hardly worthwhile.” ~ Emma Goldman
19. “If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.” ~ Emma Goldman
20. “The majority cannot reason; it has no judgment. It has always placed its destiny in the hands of others; it has followed its leaders even into destruction. The mass has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth.” ~ Emma Goldman
21. “‎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
22. “Political violence is organized violence on the top which creates individual violence at the bottom.” ~ Emma Goldman
23. “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
24. “‘Rugged individualism’ has meant all the ‘individualism’ for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking ‘supermen.’ America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as ‘un-American’ and evil in the name of that same individuality.” ~ Emma Goldman
25. 25.“Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.” ~ Emma Goldman

26. “‘What I believe’ is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.” ~ Emma Goldman
27. “The people are urged to be patriotic … by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.” ~ Emma Goldman
28. “Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future.” ~ Emma Goldman
29. “Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.” ~ Emma Goldman
30. 30. “What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!” ~ Emma Goldman