Quotes By Emma Goldman

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

In the true sense one's 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.

The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

Idealists foolish enough to throw caution to the winds have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

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 man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

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

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

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

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.

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.

One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

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.

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

When we can't dream any longer we die.

Free love? as if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.

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

Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.

Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.

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

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.

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.

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

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

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.