Emma Goldman Quotes

Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.

Autocracy is a government of the few from above; Bolshevism is a government of the few from below.

If the king did not, without tiring, inflict punishment on those worthy to be punished, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish on a spit

One of the damnable unhappy conditions of life is sometimes Government has to make people be civil.

In a monarchy, the bureaucratic world oppresses and plunders the people for the greater benefit of the privileged propertied classes as well as for its own benefit, and all that is done in the name of the monarch; in a republic, the same bureaucracy does exactly the same thing, but in the name of the will of the people. ;, .d. monarchy;, .d. bureaucracy;, .d. oppression;, .d. republics;, .d. democracy;, In a monarchy, the bureaucratic world oppresses and plunders the people for the greater benefit of the privileged propertied classes as well as for its own benefit, and all that is done in the name of the monarch; in a republic, the same bureaucracy does exactly the same thing, but in the name of the will of the people.

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.

Solidarity forever …. We stand outcast and starving from the wonders we have made.

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

… the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government.

You, yourselves, are principally to blame for allowing this in the past. You have allowed great squatters of the worst type to rule you to their own advantage; they have themselves grabbed the good land, and they attempt to pose as your friends by offering you the crumbs that fall from their table. You have the power in your own hands now, and if you do not wish to be forever serfs of territorial gods almighty; if you have got any of the energy of your progenitors, you will not stand this kind of injustice any longer. You will say to them with me — Wealth that we make for you, money we earn; give us our share of them, give us a turn. If you have the pluck to say this, then return me as your representative, and I will lead you

The rich don’t need to rely on government … -- they can buy … things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may have once had. They also worry about strong government: one that could use its powers to … take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good.

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

People never move towards revolution; they are pushed towards it by intolerable injustices in the economic and social order under which they live.

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.

Hear me people: We have now to deal with another race - small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.

To be sure, the use of force by one party in a market transaction in order to improve his price was no invention of capitalism. Unequal exchange is an ancient practice. What was remarkable about capitalism as a historical system was the way in which this unequal exchange could be hidden; indeed, hidden so well that it is only after five hundred years of the operation of this mechanism that even the avowed opponents of the system have begun to unveil it systematically.

To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.

The capitalist class rules but does not govern: it contents itself with ruling the government.

Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.

Democrats don't resent the rich on behalf of the poor. They resent the rich on behalf of the government.

Government is the agent of those who are too refined to do their own mugging.

We're now seeing levels of inequality raise their heads that we haven't seen since the age of the robber barons. If somebody watched The Deuce, and understood the allegory about capital and labor, and understands what happens when one side is vulnerable to the other, that would be swell.

I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.

We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the world war, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.