Emma Goldman Quotes

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.

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution.

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.

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.

I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

I don’t care if a man’s theory for tomorrow is correct, I care if his spirit of today is correct.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion.

Religion and morality are a much better whip to keep people in submission than even the club and the gun.