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Emma Goldman Biography

Emma Goldman (June 27 [O.S. June 15], 1869 – May 14, 1940) was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

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Emma Goldman Quotes

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

Ideas, Law, Place, Wheel, Wheels

The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.

Atheism, Degree, Events, Ideas, Mind, Progressively

The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution - particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements

Class, Ideas, Involves, Political

How long would authority. . . exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen.

Authority, Hangmen, Long, Soldier

Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails.

Conduct, Government, Men, Mind, Needs

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities.

Deeply, Oneness, Peculiarities, Self, Sex, Traits

It is essential that we realize once and for all that man is much more of a sex creature than a moral creature. The former is inherent, the other is grafted on.

Aquariums, Essential, Grafted, Men, Moral, Sex

Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.

Anarchism, Color, Make, Men, Real, Work

It is organized violence on the top which creates individual violence at the bottom

Bottom, Individual, Top, Violence

The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes.

Doe, Import, Kind, Quality, Woman

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

Book, Educational, Ignorance, Peace, Society, Violent

Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.

Belongs, Force, Give, Giving, Ifs, Take

Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.

Individual, Liberator, Men, Pacifier, Phantoms, Two

Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression - to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a chariot wheel' which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.

Account, Idea, Ideas, Law, Moving

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

Art, Commonplace, Creative, People, Result

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.

Gain, Philosophy, Political, Response, View, Views

Why waste your life working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day, when a woman could earn a decent wage by selling her body instead?

Body, Decent, Shillings, Waste, Week

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future.

Casts, Future, Morrow, Parent, Shadow

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.

Fighting, Humanity, Atheism, Paralyzing, Influence

Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

Atmosphere, Dwell, Free, Love Is, Yes

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