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Emma Goldman (1869-1940) Woman can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her 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 of 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. - * - The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made (sic) law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. - * - Poor Human Nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from King to policeman, from the flathead parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and the weaknesses of human nature. Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? - * - If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution. - * - The most violent element in society is ignorance. - * - [Anarchism's] ...economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. _Anarchism: What it Really Stands For_ - * - Anarchism, at least as I understand it, leaves posterity free to develop its own particular systems, in harmony with its needs. Our most vivid imagination cannot forsee the potentialities of a race set free from external restraints. How, then can anyone assume to map out a line of conduct for those to come? We, who pay dearly for every breath of fresh air, must guard against the tendency to fetter the future. If we succeed in clearing the soil from the rubbish of the past and the present, we will leave to posterity the greatest and safest heritage of all ages. EMMA GOLDMAN, _Anarchism_, 1910