Emma Goldman Quotes

A revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.

All revolutions are treason until they are accomplished.

Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

Revolutions are effected in two ways, by force and by fraud.

The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.

Every revolution, bloody or not, has two phases. The first phase is defined by the struggle for freedom, the second by the struggle for power and revenge on the votaries of the ancien regime.

Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia and Egypt - got rid of them.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Judge for yourself who's still fighting for change and who got sick on power, because the person in the Miraflores has forgotten about the people of Venezuela.

The Arab Spring I think we will look back whether it's two years, five years, ten or fifteen. And say it's a good thing.

Russia probably knows the true cost of revolutions better than most other countries.

When we overthrew Mubarak, we did this in 18 days. And because we were very naive and very unexperienced in revolutions, we thought that that was it. It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days. So we were very naive.

The revolution is a torrent which sweeps aside those who resist it.

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

The revolution will stop at nothing. We have changed the nature of politics.

History, indeed, records some very radical changes in the forms of government to which a state has been subjected without its interests being absolutely and permanently shipwrecked.

The “terror” of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

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

Change: In politics, the substitution of one disappointment for another.

Revolutions breeds its own excesses.

Only force would produce social change.