“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.”
“The most violent element in society is ignorance.”
“Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.”
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”
“Patriotism is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.”
“Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…”
“No real social change has ever been
brought about without a revolution –
Revolution is but thought carried into action.
Every effort for progress, for enlightenment,
for science, for religious, political, and
economic liberty, emanates from the minority,
and not from the mass.”
“[A woman’s] development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.”
from Woman Suffrage- 1910”
* Some of the quotes are excerpted from Anarchism and Other Essays
Mugshot, Aug. 31, 1893
From the documentary “Anarchism in America” (1983) by Pacific Street Films.
Fearless advocate in support of free speech, birth control, women’s rights and labor. She spoke out against government and big business, but her outspoken opposition to war and World War I, along with her protest against the draft, led to the deportation of this so-called “most dangerous anarchist in America.” She was ordered back to her native Russia in 1919, and returned just once to the United States before her death in Toronto in 1940.
excerpted from “American Experience” on PBS
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