Reds (1981)

Maureen Stapleton: Emma Goldman

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Quotes 

• Emma Goldman : I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.

• Max Eastman : I'll walk you home.

  Emma Goldman : Why? I won't hurt anyone.

• John Reed : What did you think this thing was gonna be? A revolution by consensus where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?

  Emma Goldman : Nothing works. Four million people died last year. Not from fighting a war, they died from starvation and typhus in a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights where nothing works.

• Emma Goldman : Jack, I think we have to face it. The dream that we had is dying in Russia. If Bolshevism means the peasants taking the land, the workers taking the factories, Russia's one place where there's no Bolshevism.

• Emma Goldman : The conversation is over. You're a journalist, Jack. When you're a revolutionary, we'll discuss priorities. Hopefully over coffee.

• Emma Goldman : Suddenly I'm dogmatic? Why does my status change every time you get a new woman, Jack?

• John Reed : All I'm saying is that this is not the right time to go to jail for birth control.

  Emma Goldman : Oh, there's a right time to go to jail for birth control?

• Emma Goldman : If Louise were to come here, she'd have to leave the United States illegally, then live in exile with you, and never go home again. All for the sake of a revolution she was never any part of. Why should she? You chose the life of a revolutionary. She didn't.

• Emma Goldman : The Soviets have no more local autonomy. The central state has all the power. All the power is in the hands of a few men and they are destroying the revolution. They are destroying any hope of real communism in Russia. They're putting people like me in jail. My understanding of revolution is not a continual extermination of political dissenters, and I want no part of it. Every single newspaper's been shut down or taken over by the party. Anyone even vaguely suspected of being a counter-revolutionary can be taken out and shot without a trial. Where does that end? Is any nightmare justifiable in the name of defense against counter-revolution?

• John Reed : Why hasn't she answered me?

  Emma Goldman : I think she has answered you.