[dictionary][essays][people][library][quotes]

BlackCrayon.com : people : goldman


Emma Goldman

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.

[...]

Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith?

[...]

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.

[...]

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,--a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.

[...]

The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

Emma Goldman, "What is Anarchy?"

(See the review of Emma Goldman's book, Anarchism, and Other Essays.)


BlackCrayon.com : people : goldman

[dictionary][essays][people][library][quotes]