Emma Goldman Quotes

[Characterizing public schools:] godless monstrosities ... values-indoctrination centers ... a multi-billion dollar inculcation machine.

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been found that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery..

I went to public school my entire life.

American education will be determined by the quality of American public education, and that's public schools that are available.

Ever since Marx, leftists have known that the simplest way to controlling a country is via education, the news industry, and health care. If you, as a leader or as a member of a leadership organization can succeed in taking over those three things where only kids, young people, only learn what you want them to learn, they learn how horrible freedom is, how unfair capitalism is, how mean-spirited, all of this, how wonderful equality and egalitarian is. Whenever there is a communist invasion or revolution, the news outlets are the first things seized and then the schools and then health care.

Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools* do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don't give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for military-industrial complex that needs manpower.

Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us.

The whole intelectual culture has a filtering system, starts as a child in school. You're expected to accept certain beliefs, styles, behavioral patterns and so on. If you don't accept them, you are called maybe a behavioral problem, or something, and you're weeded out. Something like that goes on all the way through universities and graduate schools. There is an implicit system of filtering, which has the, it creates a strong tendency to impose conformism. Now, it's a tendency, so you do have exceptions, and sometimes the exceptions are quite striking.

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.

Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in a system of control and coercion. And once you are well educated you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely.

There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.

Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

I can assure you that there is no question of us throwing away the tradition of the Grammar Schools.

Formal religion was organized for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide.

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

Your children will go to public school and they will be trained for somewhere around 15,000 hours in ungodly secular thought. And then they'll go to Sunday school and they'll color a picture of Noah's ark. And you think that's going to stand against the lies that they are being told?

Government schools will teach children that government is wonderful.

It's mind control, see. You have to go to school, get those exams, get to university or college, get a job, get married, don't miss the boat, do it now or you'll shoot your life down the drain. Yeah. They got you as soon as you were born. They never risked a second of your life. When you have kids they'll be telling them they have to wear a plastic mask and put a penny in the slot about their nose before they can breathe in.

Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.

Out of the public schools comes the greatness of the nation.

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

Screw the truth into men's minds.

A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles - whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled - is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ''anti-conditions,'' your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.

I'm more than just a piece in their Games.