“Has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable?”

— Emma Goldman, Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty, in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)

About Emma Goldman

1869 – 1940

Lithuanian-born American anarchist and writer.

“Motherhood in the true sense should embrace all children.”

“Free love? As if love is anything but free!”

“Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.”

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”

“All becoming and growing—all that guarantees a future—involves pain.”

“The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.”

“Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning.”