Emma Goldman - Conformity, Misery and Abortion

'The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thought and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is 'public opinion'. Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled as 'queer', 'different', and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.'

'Perhaps, even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very 'uniqueness', 'separateness' and  'differentiation' make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.'  

'Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.'

'No one is lazy. they grow up hopeless from misery of their present existence, and give up. Under our order of things, every man would do the work he liked, and would have as much as his neighbour, so could not be unhappy and discouraged.'

'The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.'


'Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?'

'The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief.... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.'

'The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been and still are persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder....
proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.'