Skip to content
quotesby

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is 'ordained by divine right,' or by the majesty of the law.

Emma Goldman#6

AuthorityReformInstitutionsFailureLegitimacy

About this quote

What does it mean?
Goldman states that even the average mind questions institutions once they fail, rejecting divine right or law as justification for social fabric.
In plain terms
Failed institutions lose legitimacy when people see their failure.
What can you take from it?
Question institutions that fail to serve society.

Where it applies

  • political critique
  • social reform
  • historical analysis

Putting it to work

  • evaluate institutional performance
  • reject tradition alone

Questions to consider

  • When did you last question an institution?
  • What justifies authority?

Another view

People may accept failure longer than the quote suggests.

More from Emma Goldman

  1. 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 tha…

    Permalink to quote #5
  2. What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childli…

    Permalink to quote #7
  3. 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 fre…

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. (When) the people of the land no longer have the power to select and install their leaders, the chiefs lose their mana or power.

    Asesela RavuvuAsesela Ravuvu quote #1
  2. At the pre-emptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for …

    Joshua Abraham NortonJoshua Abraham Norton quote #1
  3. Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into…

    Emma GoldmanEmma Goldman quote #3