“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.”
A New Declaration of Independence (1909)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Emma Goldman 109
anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and sp… 1868–1940Related quotes

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)
Context: Bob Dole and Jack Kemp declared that the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln. But just what is the connection between the Republican Party of 1860 and that of 1996? The essence of slavery, Lincoln said, was expressed in the proposition: "You work; I'll eat." Upon his election as president, he was besieged by office seekers who drove him to distraction. Lincoln was blunt in his judgment of the great majority of them. They wanted to eat without working. Lincoln saw the demand for the protection of slavery and the demand for government sinecures to be at bottom one and the same. The origin of all constitutional rights, according to Lincoln, was the right that a man had to own himself, and therefore to own the product of his own labor. Government exists to protect that right, and to regulate property only to make it more valuable to its possessors.

Broadcast to the people of Australia (19 February 1948)

As quoted in Manuscripts: speeches and messages of Calvin Coolidge, 1895–1924, the Massachusetts State Library, George Fingold Library, Boston.
1920s, Speech to the the Republican Commercial Travelers' Club (1920)

Statement to the Court (1886)

“Any man that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.”
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Elliot's Debates, volume 1, p. 463. (29 July 1788)
