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“The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief… So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.”

Emma Goldman

"Mother Earth" (1911)

“The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it stands for self-denial and self-abnegation, for penance and regret, and is absolutely inert in the face of every [in]dignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.”

Emma Goldman

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

“As to killing rulers, it depends entirely on the position of the ruler. If it is the Russian tsar, I most certainly believe in dispatching him to where he belongs. If the ruler is as ineffectual as an American president, it is hardly worth the effort. 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. (p. 207)”

Emma Goldman book Living My Life

Living My Life (1931)

“Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.”

Emma Goldman

p. 219 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2162/2162-h/2162-h.htm#emancipation <br class="br">The Tragedy of Woman&#x27;s Emancipation (1906)

“It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe.”

Emma Goldman

The Philosophy of Atheism (1916)

“What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls?”

Emma Goldman

What is Patriotism? (1908)

“Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.”

Emma Goldman

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

“Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The Kropotkins, the Perovskayas, the Breshkovskayas, and hosts of others repudiated wealth and station and refused to serve King Mammon. They went among the people, not to lift them up but themselves to be lifted up, to be instructed, and in return to give themselves wholly to the people. That accounts for the heroism, the art, the literature of Russia, the unity between the people, the mujik and the intellectual. That to some extent explains the literature of all European countries, the fact that the Strindbergs, the Hauptmanns, the Wedekinds, the Brieux, the Mirbeaus, the Steinlins and Rodins have never dissociated themselves from the people.”

Emma Goldman

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

“When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.”

Emma Goldman

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

“In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values.
The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood — these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society — the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The people are asleep; they remain indifferent. They forge their own chains and do the bidding of their masters to crucify their Christs.”

Emma Goldman book Living My Life

Source: Living My Life (1931), p. 304

“I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work”

Emma Goldman

&quot;Arrest in Chicago of Emma Goldman, Preacher of Anarchy.&quot; http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1901-09-11/ed-1/seq-1/, San Francisco Call 11 Sept. 1901 The San Francisco call. (San Francisco [Calif.]), 11 Sept. 1901. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.]

“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

p. 219 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2162/2162-h/2162-h.htm#emancipation <br class="br">The Tragedy of Woman&#x27;s Emancipation (1906)

“To-day is the parent of to-morrow. 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 book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

“Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.”

Emma Goldman

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

“Those who will not worship at the shrine of money, need not hope for recognition. On the other hand, they will also not have to think other people’s thoughts or wear other people’s political clothes. They will not have to proclaim as true that which is false, nor praise that as humanitarian which is brutal.”

Emma Goldman

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

“Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fullfilled only through man's subordination.”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Anarchism: What it Really Stands For http://books.google.com/books?id=U5ZYAAAAMAAJ&amp;q=&amp;quot;Anarchism+is+the+only+philosophy+which+brings+to+man+the+consciousness+of+himself+which+maintains+that+God+the+State+and+society+are+non-existent+that+their+promises+are+null+and+void+since+they+can+be+fullfilled+only+through+man&#x27;s+subordination&amp;quot;&amp;pg=PA58#v=onepage (1910)