Emma Goldman Quotes

An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.

I'm raised to actually think, to use my brain.

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

There's a very passionate pro-chewing movement on the Internet called Chewdiasm. They say that we should be chewing 50 to 100 times per mouthful, which is insane. I tried that. It takes like a day and a half to eat a sandwich. But their basic idea is right. If you chew, you'll eat slower and you will get more nutrients.

Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than filling it with the accumulated misconceptions of the past.

The proper business of a University is ... not to tell us ... what we ought to believe, and make us accept the belief as a duty; but to give us information and training, and help us to form our own beliefs in a manner worthy of intelligent beings.

A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.

I try to eat food that hasn't been washed in ammonia and then packaged in the shape of breaded dinosaurs filled with cheese - even though those are very tasty. I like to eat food that can actually make it through the 20-plus feet of my small intestine.

Italians are very conscious of what they eat, how they eat, and its digestion.

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence.

Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.

In my opinion instruction is very purposeless for such individuals who do no want merely to collect a mass of knowledge, but are mainly interested in exercising (training) their own powers. One doesn't need to grasp such a one by the hand and lead him to the goal, but only from time to time give him suggestions, in order that he may reach it himself in the shortest way.

We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.

Unquestioning obedience is for slaves, the uneducated and the pathetic.

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.

Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.

The great charm in argument is really finding one's own opinions, not other people's.

Neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person, or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven.

The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind.

Freethought is respectable. Freethought is crucial. Freethought needs to be publicized.

Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.