Emma Goldman Quotes

Once you're in love, you have that excuse to go and do whatever you want.

I always hated the part when I had to look pretty. I love that I don't have to look pretty.

In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back.

Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

Sex is the driving force on the planet. We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy.

Our work is a scream of freedom.

I'm passionate about two things: Jesus and liberation.

Lend your voices only to sounds of freedom, no longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from. Fill your life with love and bravery, and you shall live a life uncommon.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

I was a dweller amid shadows grim: Till FREEDOM touched my yearning eyes, and lo! Life in a shining circle, rounding rose, As heaven on heaven goes up the jewell'd night. New floods of passionate life swirl'd at my heart, Like Ocean-surges rolling round the world: And FREEDOM was my glittering Bride.

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.

How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles - are you still the man you were?" he replied, "Peace, most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."

To educate is to give man the keys to the world, which are independence and love, and to give him strength to journey on his own, light of step, a spontaneous and free being.

If your purpose is to liberate yourself and others into love and freedom, then you should do whatever magnifies the love and freedom in your life and in the lives of whom your actions affect.

Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.

There is only one decision you need to make: You are either working at your Freedom or you are accepting your bondage.

There are other books in a man's library besides Ovid, and after dawdling ever so long at a woman's knee, one day he gets up and is free. We have all been there; we have all had the fever--the strongest and the smallest, from Samson, Hercules, Rinaldo, downward: but it burns out, and you get well.

Our way out involves both resistance and renewal: saying no to what is, so that we can reshape and recreate the world. Our challenge is communal, but to face it we must be empowered as individuals and create structures of support and celebration that can teach us freedom. Creation is the ultimate resistance, the ultimate refusal to accept things as they are. For it is in creation that we encounter Mystery.

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

Love is the victor in every case. Love breaks down the iron bars of thought, and sets the captive free.

The love you liberate in your work is the love you keep.

When people decide they want to be free, there is nothing that can stop them.

We're not trying to take power away or rule anybody - we're just trying to get up from under the rulers.

…find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, or protects us, but from what dissolves, reveals, and expands us.