


Emma Goldman (1869-1940)

Woman can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she
receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her
development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and
through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality and
not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right of anyone
over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them;
by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the
husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler but deeper
and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance
of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear
of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the
ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown
in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a
force of divine fire, of life giving; a creator of free men and women.

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The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by 
man-made (sic) law; the theory that all forms of government rest on 
violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.    

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Poor Human Nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy
name!  Every fool, from King to policeman, from the flathead 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 the weaknesses of human nature.
Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison,
with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

			- * -

If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution.

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The most violent element in society is ignorance.

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[Anarchism's] ...economic arrangements must consist of 
voluntary productive and distributive associations, 
gradually developing into free communism, as the best 
means of producing with the least waste of human energy.

	_Anarchism: What it Really Stands For_

			- * -

Anarchism, at least as I understand it, leaves 
posterity free to develop its own particular 
systems, in harmony with its needs.  Our most 
vivid imagination cannot forsee the potentialities 
of a race set free from external restraints. How, 
then can anyone assume to map out a line of conduct
for those to come?   We, who pay dearly for every 
breath of fresh air, must guard against the tendency 
to fetter the future.  If we succeed in clearing the 
soil from the rubbish of the past and the present, 
we will leave to posterity the greatest and safest 
heritage of all ages.

	EMMA GOLDMAN, _Anarchism_, 1910


