Skip to content

Life Quotes by Emma Goldman

42 Life quotes by Emma Goldman

All Life quotes Emma Goldman’s page

Love is described as the strongest element that shapes laws and offers its own protection. The quotes contrast the soldier’s role of taking life with the idea that love and equal rights are essential for a free society. They also question how work and poverty drive people to desperate choices, and claim that the right to love is the most vital.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Life without an ideal is spiritual death.

Image

Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea…

Image

Why waste your life working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day, when a woman could…

Image

The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is…

Image

... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but itcan not…

Image

Christ and his teachings are the embodiment of submission, of inertia, of the denial of life; hence responsible for the things done…

Image

The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically…

Image

... woman's narrow and puristattitude toward life makes hera greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man has long overcome…

Image

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right…

Image

The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that…

Image

“I discovered that those who want their property to be respected, have an interest in preaching the existence of paradise and hell,…

Image

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the…

Image

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the definer of all…

Image

The soldier's business is to take life. For that he is paid by the State, eulogized by political charlatans and upheld by…

Image

The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race…

Image

The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an…

Image

Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom or the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth…

Image

The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is…

Image

“Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above things. All Anarchists agree with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth: if…

Image

Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of…

Image

Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual…

Image

“The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that…

Image

“The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild…

Image

“Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can help her see the light, I shall not complain.…

Image

“Every stimulus which quickens the imagination and raises the spirits, is as necessary to our life as air. It invigorates the body,…

Image

“...Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is indeed,…

Image

“The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into…

Image

It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little…

Image

Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it…

Image

“Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or…

Image

How to raise this dead level of theistic belief is really a matter of life and death for all denominations. Therefore their…

Image

Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those…

Image

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is…

Image

The State has no more existence than gods and devils have. They are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man,…

Image

“The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right…

Image

... woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man haslong…

Image

What will you do with the lazy ones, who would not work?' No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery…

Image

The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here…

Image

If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit,…

Image

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and…

Image

Other authors on Life

More by Emma Goldman

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight…

“Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based…

Lack of fairness to an opponent is essentially a sign of weakness.

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based…

Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested - for a while at least. The…

More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class; the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the definer of all laws, of…

Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of women is responsible for prostitution.

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.

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

The persecution of the innovator and protestant has always been inspired by fear on the part of constituted authority of having its infallibility questioned…

Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only "order" that governments have…

Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social.…

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future.

The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.