, without proof, were held responsible for the violence that erupted at the Chicago Haymarket Square worker’s rally on May 4, 1886] was my spiritual birth: their ideal became the motive of my entire life… Anarchism is a releasing and liberating force because it teaches people to rely on their own possibilities, teaches them faith in liberty, and inspires men and women to strive for a state of social life where everyone shall be free and secure.”
Literary Luncheon for Emma Goldman and Paul Robeson, London.
(Remarks by author Rebecca West about Emma Goldman at the same luncheon in London, 1933) “I wanted to tell you something about her that possibly would not be mentioned otherwise, and that is that she is one of the best cooks in the whole world. I once was present at a debate among epicures, and the conclusion of various people in a position to know was that the two best cooks now living were Miss Willa Cather, the American novelist, and Miss Goldman. Well, that, after all, is a very great claim to fame, but of course there are so many claims that Emma has, because she is at the top of her form in many ways.”
(Quote from a speech by Emma Goldman, as reported in the press) “With my eyesight I can’t see many of you, not much beyond the first row. Please don’t feel that I have made sacrifices [or] that I’m a martyr. I have followed my bent, lived my life as I chose, and no one owes me anything. I’m no more respectable than I ever was. It’s you who have become a little more liberal, and it’s never too late to progress… You are progressing.”
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
“It’s a happy, enthusiastic, and militant Emma who now holds forth from a small flat in West Kensington, London. The famous radical leader has, she declares, ‘found a cause worth living for—and worth dying for as well.’
’What’s glorious about [the anarchists of] Spain for me is seeing the very things I’ve worked for and believed in all my life. I’m seeing my ideas put into practice by a people who are building while they fight; doing something constructive while they keep the enemy back.’”
Worthwhile—for Spain” Milwaukee Journal