Emma Goldman Quotes

We must remember, elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects.

A party is only revolutionary on condition of revolutionizing the heads of women and men.

Without destruction of the State, there is no revolution.

Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.

No revolution is worth anything unless it can defend itself.

People involved in a revolution don't become part of the system; they destroy the system... The Negro revolution is no revolution because it condemns the system and then asks the system it has condemned to accept them.

Revolution is not a one time event.

Revolution in the modern case is no longer an uncouth business.

We have not made the Revolution, the Revolution has made us.

In the modern world, it is not the poor and the oppressed who have led the great revolutions and/or carried out the worst deeds of violence; rather, it is militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society.

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

To die for the revolution is a one-shot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day life patterns.

Patriots have been incapable of removing one brick from this structure by “working within the system.” … There are two paths open to those who love the great America of their forefathers.

Make the revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

No great revolution can happen in a state without revolutions or mutations of private property.

Every revolutionary movement ... proposes the greatest number of achievements possible.

They preached equality in everything. And faithful to their doctrine, these forerunners of modern socialism robbed Mandarins and the rich of their property, which they distributed to the poor. The villages laboring under exorbitant tribute [taxes] were willing to swear allegiance.

Fire in the lake: The image of revolution.

Great institutions can only be reformed by stealth or by revolution.

Beginning reform is beginning revolution.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history. Drive them full speed ahead and keep them on the rails... .

The generation which commences a revolution can rarely complete it

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

it is not the topping of a regime that determines the overall success of a revolution -- it's dismantling the past in favor of a better future.

A revolution is generally only evolution--an explosive sequence of events crowded into a short space of time, but leaving more of the ancient regime untouched than usually is at first apparent.