Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Revolutionary goals get sacrificed when the focus shifts to maintaining government power.
In plain terms
Power becomes more important than the original revolutionary ideals.
What can you take from it?
Watch how power can corrupt original movements.

Where it applies

  • political movements
  • organizing

Putting it to work

  • prioritize values over power

Questions to consider

  • Does power change movements?
  • Can you keep power and values?

Another view

It ignores cases where maintaining power is necessary for progress.

More from Emma Goldman

  1. In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy.…

    Permalink to quote #26
  2. This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the pa…

    Permalink to quote #28
  3. Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means…

    Permalink to quote #25

Related quotes

  1. The economic prerequisites for the socialist revolution are fully matured in the US. The political premises are likewise far more advanced than might appear on…

    James P. CannonJames P. Cannon quote #2
  2. The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decisive element, they a…

    Rosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg quote #3
  3. Hitler can't walk over me as he might have done a year ago; I've seen to that. Don't forget that I have three million men, with every key position in the hands…

    Ernst RoehmErnst Roehm quote #6