Quotes by Emma Goldman

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

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.

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

Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.