Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.
Emma GoldmanPolitics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: 'To take is more blessed than to give'; 'buy cheap and sell dear'; 'one soiled hand washes the other.
Emma GoldmanTo the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
Emma GoldmanThere is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another ... All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim.
Emma GoldmanThe American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people.
Emma GoldmanCrime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.
Emma Goldman