Emma Goldman

Russian-born American anarchist (1869–1940)

  • Fame76.3
  • Momentum16.9
  • Journalists rank#62
Source-basedBreakout
  • Fame76.3
  • Momentum16.9
  • Journalists rank#62
  • Wikipedia45.6K
Lived 1869–1940, aged 71
JournalistsJournalist
  • Wikipedia
    96 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1869–1940
    Aged 71
Summary
Updated 2026-09-07

She gave speeches that packed halls and got her thrown in prison — for talking about anarchism, birth control, and why the state itself was the problem. Deported from America, disillusioned by the Soviets, she spent decades as the most uncompromising voice on the left.

Biography

About

Born in 1869 in Kaunas to a Lithuanian Jewish family, Emma Goldman came to the United States in 1885 and found her cause after the Haymarket affair turned her toward anarchism. With Alexander Berkman — lover, collaborator, lifelong friend — she plotted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1892; the attempt failed, Berkman went to prison for 22 years, and Goldman spent the next decades lecturing to thousands, founding the journal Mother Earth in 1906, and cycling through arrests for incitement and distributing birth control literature. Sentenced in 1917 for anti-draft conspiracy, sh…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman
said
The statements published in American newspapers which have been attributed to me are absolute falsifications full of lying insinuations. I love America of the common people.
printed in The Liberator (1920), note in magazine: "The following radiogram about Emma Goldman received by the Federated Press, October 27,
Emma Goldman
said
I hope I shall never live to see Anarchism become thoroughly respectable, for then I shall have to look for a new ideal.
Letter to Helen Keller (1916), published by "The American Foundation for the Blind"
Emma Goldman
said
When we can't dream any longer we die.
Quoted by Margaret C. Anderson in "Emma Goldman in Chicago", Mother Earth magazine (December 1914)
Emma Goldman
said
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.
"Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", a lecture (c. 1912), published in Red Emma Speaks, Part 1 (1972) edited by Alix Kates Shulman
Emma Goldman
said
The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief...
"Mother Earth" (1911)
Where to find them

Platforms

By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Rising
76.3
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum16.9
Historical25.6
Now attention100.0
Source confidence65.0
Completeness65.0
Global rank
Country rank
Category rank
#62
Receipts

Sources