Emma Goldman Quotes

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

In 'A Scandalous Woman,' the eventually distraught narrator watches as her high-spirited friend is beaten down - literally and figuratively - by Ireland's pious customs.

I don't know why, but if I was walking down the street, the same people who called me freak would probably ask for a picture. It's a real strange thing.

The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of 'decency.' The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.

The United States is considered a puritanical society by many Western nations. For example, they can't believe we hassle public servants like General David Petraeus because he had a mistress. In France, if a powerful man doesn't have a mistress, he's considered a wimp.

Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn't agree with - the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there.

I just heard a story from someone the other day where somebody was beaten up by Christians for wearing one of our shirts. Of course, that's a very Christian thing to do.

People can't stand it when you deal with issues of race and class, and also sometimes the church, and you give a perspective that flushes out hypocrisy.

Even a criminal has the right to a new life, but they made sure I did not have that. They just didn't stop calling me a prostitute for ever and ever and ever and ever.

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes.

People are becoming more bestial on both sides – and the full weight of responsibility for this rests on that party, which in the name of socialism blasphemously sanctified the cold-blooded execution of unarmed prisoners, which hypocritically protests against whiteguard executions in Finland while Russian soil is being drenched in the blood of the victims of firing squads.

Parsons always seem to be specially horrified about things like sunbathing and naked bodies. They don't mind poverty and misery and cruelty to animals nearly as much.

The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

No prohibition of a vice is ever taken without protest.

When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.

There is no such thing as wise regulation of a generally acknowledged evil.

Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.

Our pious horror at the intolerant and repressive behaviour of Islamic State is bitterly funny, given that it is really not that different from the policies of our close ally, Saudi Arabia.

I just don't like bullies. Especially hypocritical bullies.

My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.

Behind every erotic condemnation there's a burning hypocrite.

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.