Emma Goldman Quotes

You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.

Every animal is providentially directed to the use of its proper weapon.

I don't use machines - animals don't use machines.

A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage.

The sight of a cage is only frightening to the bird that has once been caught.

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

In my books, there are a lot of people stuck in rooms. Or, conversely, out in the wide open. It seems that, in a funny way, when people are cooped up in rooms they are freer than when they are wandering about in the world.

I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?' Almost. Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.

We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.

The horse that drawes after him his halter, is not altogether escaped.

But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you. If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.

A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.

Everybody's talking about people breaking into houses but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.

What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom.

Only the man who has known freedom Can define his prison.

Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed because we didn't have any. It is like monkeys in a zoo. They die. You know, everything needs to be left alone.

I'm not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them.

For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.

This is what birds see. Only they're free and safe. The very opposite of me.

One good thing about being locked in a cage: No responsibility!

The eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness.

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

Zoologists have reckoned there are up to at least 750 species of animal that have been observed exhibiting same-sex behaviour, or gender role transformation (which is very common in a wide range of fauna). There is only one species on earth, however, which has exhibited homophobia or transphobia. And that is the species homo sapiens sapiens. Us. So let's not allow the foolish, ignorant or bigoted ever to use words like "natural."

Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do.We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. [. . .] The animals need only be and do.We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom.

Q: If you could be an animal, what kind of animal would you be? A: You already are an animal.