Emma Goldman Giving Quotations

If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

The soldier's business is to take life. For that he is paid by the State, eulogized by political charlatans and upheld by public hysteria. But woman's function is to give life, yet neither the State nor politicians nor public opinion have ever made the slightest provision in return for the life woman has given.

Politicians promise you heaven before election and give you hell after

Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.

What I prized most was freedom, freedom to do my work, to give myself spontaneously and not out of duty or by command. I could not submit to such demands; rather would I choose the path of a homeless wanderer; yes, even go without love.

If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right!

What will you do with the lazy ones, who would not work?' No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery of their present existence, and give up. Under our order of things, every men would do the work he liked, and would have as much as his neighbor, so could not be unhappy and discouraged.