Emma Goldman Quotes

People without jobs cannot be expected to behave in a lawful, measured way.

On my way back to Missouri I stopped in St Louis and I saw my first bread line – 200 starving men forming a gray line as they waited for food. The sight of them disturbed me.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

Our people are unemployed and anxious to work for the food which foreigners can give us.

If Victual should prove scarce, as we have not Goods or Money for any Value to send out for Corns [food grains like wheat]; so only a part of the People could be maintained: The better part would have Bread, but the more necessary part, the Laboring Men would be forced to leave the Country, or to starve in it.

What can he do who lacks the necessary work, if he comes to be unemployed? He has nothing but to let himself die of hunger. Then a few phrases of pity will thrown on his cadaver.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

Unemployment is a great tragedy. The man who goes about hopelessly seeking work in order to earn bread for his children is a living reproach to civilization.

We take food for granted, but it isn't a luxury for many people.

Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

People might not protest for overtly political or social causes, but when they can't feed themselves and their family, they will take to the streets.

In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.

I have stopped at farm after farm where lean, underfed women and sickly men repeated again and again the same story—little food and no opportunity to get more.

If the unemployed could eat plans and promises they would be able to spend the winter on the Riviera.

Demonstrate before the palaces of the rich; demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right.

A starving man thinks first of satisfying his hunger before anything else. He will sell his liberty and all for the sake of getting a morsel of food.

Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life.

[In the 1924 presidential election, campaign contributions from workers to the senator were not as high as had been hoped for by the campaign staff. Those pay checks are all that stand between starvation for those workers and their families. You are asking too much of them.

‘Money can't buy happiness.’ That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting in the streets

I know of only three ways of living in society: one must be a beggar, a thief, or a wage earner.

‘Give us food or we perish’, is now the loudest cry that is heard in this unfortunate country. It is heard in every corner of the Island …. It is a strange popular cry to be heard within the limits of the powerful and wealthy British Empire…. Russia wants liberty, Prussia wants a constitution, Switzerland wants religion, Spain wants a king. Ireland alone wants food.

There is no dignity without work. You can't tell someone who has nothing to eat to stay patient.

Coronavirus has exposed for all what many of us already knew - some of our most important workers have barely enough to live on, and millions are condemned to financial insecurity, inequality and food poverty.

Yeah, I'll basically do anything to make money for food.