Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia.
Emma GoldmanIt is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe.
Emma GoldmanThe triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods; it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond.
Emma GoldmanThe strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.
Emma GoldmanโCivilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship.
Emma GoldmanThe import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes.
Emma GoldmanMen towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.
Emma Goldman