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To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future.
EMMA GOLDMAN, My Disillusionment with Russia
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence.... Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.
EMMA GOLDMAN, "What Is Patriotism?", speech, 1908
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.
EMMA GOLDMAN, "The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation," Anarchism and Other Essays
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.
EMMA GOLDMAN, "The Philosophy of Atheism," Mother Jones, Feb. 1916
There are, however, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth.
EMMA GOLDMAN, Living My Life
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.
EMMA GOLDMAN, "Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap," Red Emma Speaks
The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.
EMMA GOLDMAN, Living My Life
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.
EMMA GOLDMAN, My Disillusionment with Russia
Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.
EMMA GOLDMAN, Anarchism and Other Essays
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.
EMMA GOLDMAN, Anarchism and Other Essays
Every society has the criminals it deserves.
EMMA GOLDMAN, Red Emma Speaks
Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an emaciated, deformed, willless, ship-wrecked crew of humanity, with the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as the only possibility of existence. It is not at all an unusual thing to find men and women who have spent half their lives--nay, almost their entire existence--in prison.
EMMA GOLDMAN, "Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure", Anarchism and Other Essays
When primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature.
EMMA GOLDMAN, "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty", Anarchism and Other Essays
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