Emma Goldman Quotes

When in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself.

Throughout my life, I have always supported the human being in his humanism and I have supported the oppressed. I think it is the person's right to live his freedom and it is her and his right to face the injustice imposed on each by revolting against it, using his practical, realistic and available means to end the oppressor's injustice toward him, whether it is an individual, a community, a nation, or a state; whether male or female.

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

During my last voyage to America, I enjoyed the happiness of seeing that revolution completed, and, thinking of the one that would probably occur in France, I said in a speech to Congress, published everywhere except in the 'French Gazette,' 'May this revolution serve as a lesson to oppressors and as an example to the oppressed!'

An oppressed people will always rise.

I was sympathetic to virtually all groups that wanted to get away from the old system.

My fellow revolutionaries, liberation is a noble cause. We must fight to obtain it.

Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated.

The abetters of slavery are weaving the thread in the loom, but God is adjusting the pattern. They are asses harnessed to the chariot of Liberty, and, whether they will or no, must draw it on.

A group oppressed, is a group enslaved ….Whenever a group, a community of people, in unison, feels that it is being oppressed, and that it wants to control its destiny, then that community has a moral right to seek effective redress, or demand to control its own destiny as appropriate

The glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people, struggling to burst their chains and be free.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny

Radicalism is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom.

You cannot play the Song of Freedom on an instrument of oppression.

Peoples, hear the signal! Arise, for the last battle The International Fights for the Rights of Man! No higher being can save us, No God, no Kaiser, nor tribune Saving us from misery we ourselves alone must do!

Power Concedes Nothing

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

It is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

When people rise, they must have a goal worthy of them. Must paltry goods be of concern to them?... The people must rise up not to collect sugar, but to bring down the tyrants.