Quotes by Emma Goldman

It has often been suggested to me that the Constitution of the United States is a sufficient safeguard for the freedom of its citizens. It is obvious that even the freedom it pretends to guarantee is very limited. I have not been impressed with the adequacy of the safeguard. The nations of the world, with centuries of international law behind them, have never hesitated to engage in mass destruction when solemnly pledged to keep the peace; and the legal documents in America have not prevented the United States from doing the same. Those in authority have and always will abuse their power. And the instances when they do not do so are as rare as roses growing on icebergs. Far from the Constitution playing any liberating part in the lives of the American people, it has robbed them of the capacity to rely on their own resources or do their own thinking. Americans are so easily hoodwinked by the sanctity of law and authority. In fact, the pattern of life has become standardized, routinized, and mechanized like canned food and Sunday sermons. The hundred-percenter easily swallows syndicated information and factory-made ideas and beliefs. He thrives on the wisdom given him over the radio and cheap magazines by corporations whose philanthropic aim is selling America out. He accepts the standards of conduct and art in the same breath with the advertising of chewing gum, toothpaste, and shoe polish. Even songs are turned out like buttons or automobile tires--all cast from the same mold.

The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair but after all the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.

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.

The motto should not be: Forgive one another rather understand one another.

Man has bought brains but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.

The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal outside of the law.

When we cant dream any longer we die.

Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.

There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.

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 mans right to his body, or womans right to her soul.

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.

On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.

If voting changed anything, theyd make it illegal.

To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.

Morality and its victim, the mother - what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?

All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.

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.

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.