Emma Goldman Quotes

One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.

Even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.

Government is force.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.

Power depends ultimately on physical force. By teaching people that violence is wrong (except, of course, when the system itself uses violence via the police or the military), the system maintains its monopoly on physical force and thus keeps all power in its own hands.

The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

'Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being.

In the larger life of society, the people are made to submit to the orders of those who were originally meant to serve them—the government and its agents.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as the most free and the most popular.

Would you rather lead an army of slaves?

It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical.

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.

As men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.

Those who fear men like laws.

A man with a club is a law-maker.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

When one by force subdues men, they do not submit to him in heart. They submit because their strength is not adequate to resist.

You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power.