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About this quote

What does it mean?
Goldman claims people remain indifferent, forge their own chains, and obey masters who kill their leaders.
In plain terms
People sleep and create their own oppression.
What can you take from it?
Awaken to avoid self-created oppression.

Where it applies

  • activism
  • social critique
  • personal responsibility

Putting it to work

  • challenge apathy
  • question obedience

Questions to consider

  • Are you making your own chains?
  • What keeps you asleep?

Another view

Some oppression is external not self-created.

More from Emma Goldman

  1. America had declared war with Spain.... It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with…

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  2. Nothing would prove more disastrous to our ideas, we contended, than to neglect the effect of the internal upon the external, of the psychological motives and …

    Permalink to quote #44
  3. As to killing rulers, it depends entirely on the position of the ruler. If it is the Russian tsar, I most certainly believe in dispatching him to where he belo…

    Permalink to quote #41

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