Quotes by

Emma Goldman

Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world. – Emma Goldman

Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there. – Emma Goldman

Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the fathers curse, mothers moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. – Emma Goldman

Id rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. – Emma Goldman

If voting changed anything, theyd make it illegal. – Emma Goldman

In the true sense ones native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home. – Emma Goldman

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. – Emma Goldman

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open. – Emma Goldman

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. – Emma Goldman

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. – Emma Goldman

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? – Emma Goldman

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

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

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. – Emma Goldman

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. – Emma Goldman

The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice. – Emma Goldman

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

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

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. – Emma Goldman

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. – Emma Goldman