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Emma Goldman
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“Out of the chaos the future emerges in harmony and beauty.”
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“'Predigested food' should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their original sense of judgment ...”
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“'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.”
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“There can be no freedom in the large sense of the word, no harmonious development, so long as mercenary and commercial considerations play an important part in the determination of personal conduct.”
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“... statutory regulations, legislative enactments, constitutional provisions, are invasive. They never yet induced man to do anything he could and would not do by virtue of his intellect or temperament, nor prevented anything that man was impelled to do by the same dictates.”
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“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.”
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“Religion is a superstition that originated in man's mental inability to solve natural phenomena. The Church is an organized institution that has always been a stumbling block to progress.”
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“The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality.”
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“The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.”
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“... the greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.”
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“A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing; to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better.”
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“One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing.”
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“Anarchism: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful as well as unnecessary.”
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“... the most violent element in society is ignorance ...”
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“Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.”
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“... wealth means power: the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade.”
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“Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soulless army of human prey.”
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“The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.”
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“Crime is naught but misdirected energy.”
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“Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!”
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“The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.”
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“No real social change has ever come about without a revolution.”
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“... revolution is but thought carried into action.”
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“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.”
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“... the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display.”
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“... every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.”
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“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.”
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“The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another.”
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“Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: 'To take is more blessed than to give'; 'buy cheap and sell dear'; 'one soiled hand washes the other.'”
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“... true emancipation ... will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.”
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“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 ...”
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“The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.”
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“Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested — for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.”
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“Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.”
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“Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting.”
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“Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State- and Church-begotten weed, marriage?”
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“Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation.”
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“The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.”
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“... religion and morality are a much better whip to keep people in submission than even the club and the gun.”
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“The average mind is easily content with inherited and acquired things, or with the dicta of parents and teachers, because it is much easier to imitate than to create.”
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“Success achieved by the most contemptible means cannot but destroy the soul. ... It helps to cover up the inner corruption and gradually dulls one's scruples, so that those who begin with some high ambition cannot, even if they would, create anything out of themselves.”
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“When we can't dream any longer, we die.”
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“The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class ... ”
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“... so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.”
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“You cannot build up a standing army and then throw it back into a box like tin soldiers. Armies equipped to the teeth with weapons, with highly developed instruments of murder and backed by their military interests, have their own dynamic functions.”
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“Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue.”
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“... the function of militarism is to kill. It cannot live except through murder.”
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“No, it is not because woman is lacking in responsibility, but because she has too much of the latter that she demands to know how to prevent conception.”
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“The soldier's business is to take life. For that he is paid by the State, eulogized by political charlatans and upheld by public hysteria. But woman's function is to give life, yet neither the State nor politicians nor public opinion have ever made the slightest provision in return for the life woman has given.”
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“All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.”
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“I may be arrested, I may be tried and thrown into jail, but I never will be silent.”
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“There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This conception is a potent menance to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim.”
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“... all government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses.”
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“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.”
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“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. ”
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“At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance ... My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful idea, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy ... If it meant that, I did not want it.”
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“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 ...”
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“No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true educator should be to unlock that treasure ...”
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“The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.”
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“... 'readiness,' far far from assuring peace, has at all times and in all countries been instrumental in precipitating armed conflicts.”
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“Lack of fairness to an opponent is essentially a sign of weakness.”
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“The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.”
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“What is generally regarded as success — acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige — I consider the most dismal failures. I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he is finished — his development has stopped at that point.”
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“I'd much rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.”
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“There is no such thing as a good government. There never was. There can't be.”
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“The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land.”
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“The State is a term for the legislative and administrative machinery whereby certain business of the people is transacted, and badly so.”
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“The State has no more existence than gods and devils have. They are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man, the individual, is the only reality. The State is but the shadow of man, the shadow of his opaqueness, of his ignorance and fear.”
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“The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.”
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“... our present system of economic and political dependence is maintained not so much by wealth and courts as it is by an inert mass of humanity, drilled and pounded into absolute uniformity, and that the school today represents the most efficient medium to accomplish that end.”
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“Jealousy is the very reverse of understanding, of sympathy, and of generous feeling. Never has jealousy added to character, never does it make the individual big and fine.”
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“It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. ”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America.”
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“Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing which must be earned before it can be enjoyed.”
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“I regard it as a tragedy that people of a differing sexual orientation find themselves proscribed in a world that has so little understanding for homosexuals and that displays such gross indifference for sexual gradations and variations and the great significance they have for living. It is completely foreign to me to wish to regard such people as less valuable, less moral, incapable of noble sentiments and behavior.”
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“Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.”
Emma Goldman, Lithuanian-born U.S. anarchist, writer
(1869 - 1940)