Emma Goldman Quotes

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women's intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?

My most cherished desire is to help our women come out of their routine chores and infuse in them the indefatigable spirit of adventure.

We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.

For a few thousand years, women had no history. Marriage was our calling, and meekness our virtue. Over the last century, in stuttering succession, we have gained a voice, a vote, a room, a playing field of our own. Decorously or defiantly, we now approach what surely qualifies as the final frontier.

… in an age when human rights are preached loudly from the rooftops, women had to be accepted as equals and allowed to think and act in their own interests and by their own efforts.

Women are such incredible people. We're so multifaceted, we're so interesting, and any opportunity to celebrate that - because there's been many years of not being able to - and expose what it's like to be female and how we can be whoever we want to be, and do whatever we want to do, is great.

We don't expect someone in a bikini to stand up for women's rights; we only expect a girl in an 'NGO outfit' to speak about it. It's as much as the right of the girl in the bikini to talk about it as a woman in a kurta. We need to embrace that multiplicity.

We gotta break these double-standards and get women to loosen up a bit. We gotta show them that we can do what we want to do how we want to do it. If someone doesn't like it, they can get to stepping.

Women's history is the primary tool for women's emancipation.

If you have a slave around the house how can you expect to make a revolution outside it? The problem for women is that if we try to be free, then we naturally become lonely, because so many women are willing to become slaves, and men usually prefer that.

In the same way that slavery was a moral challenge for the 19th century and totalitarianism was a challenge for the 20th century, the challenge that women and girls face around the world is the moral challenge of our time.

Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man ... the highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature.

Women's empowerment is intertwined with respect for human rights.

The tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings into full-fledged human beings.

We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help free the other half.

Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.

It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy.

Women often find great roles in revolution, simply because the rules fall apart and everyone has agency, anyone can act.

I think it's a wonderful time for a woman.

Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail their failure must be but a challenge to others.

I have made speeches urging women to adopt methods of rebellion such as have been adopted by men in every revolution.

The search for human freedom can never be complete without freedom for women.

I would like the world to know that Yemeni women are strong, and if empowered, they can achieve. The world needs to look beyond stereotypes and dress code. In our hearts, we are just human beings who want to live a dignified life. Is that too much to ask for?

My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it's very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.