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Who really said it

Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you bread, then take bread

Attributed to Emma Goldman 1869–1940 · anarchist orator & essayist
Attributed Free to reuse

Goldman said something very close to this to a mass meeting of striking cloakmakers and unemployed workers in Union Square, New York, on 21 August 1893 — the speech that led to her conviction for inciting to riot. But no transcript survives: the two early printings both end “if they do not give you work or bread, then take bread,” and Goldman’s own memoir remembers the sentence differently again, so this tidy popular form cannot be pinned to any primary text.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you bread, then take bread” Emma Goldman, Union Square speech, New York, 21 August 1893 — as reported in Hippolyte Havel, "Biographic Sketch," in Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, 2nd rev. ed. (1911), p. 25: "Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread." No transcript of the speech survives; the popular version drops "work or" from the final clause. Via Quotle.info

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Provenance

Where the words are actually printed

Occasion
Union Square mass meeting, New York — 21 August 1893
Printed 1893
In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation
Printed 1911
Anarchism and Other Essays, 2nd rev. ed., “Biographic Sketch” by Hippolyte Havel, p. 25
Transcript
None known — every surviving version is a later report

She delivered an impassioned speech, picturing in fiery words the misery of the wage slave’s life, and quoted the famous maxim of Cardinal Manning: “Necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbor’s bread.” She concluded her exhortation with the words: “Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.” Havel, 1911, p. 25

Havel’s sketch is a report, not a transcript — and note the third clause: work or bread, the two words the popular version drops.

Scanned book page
Page 25 of the 1911 edition
Havel's Biographic Sketch on Wikisource

How the sentence travelled

  • 21 August 1893 — Goldman addresses a mass demonstration in Union Square, New York. She is arrested soon after in Philadelphia, convicted of inciting a riot, and sentenced to a year in prison (First Amendment Encyclopedia ↗).
  • 1893 — Voltairine de Cleyre’s lecture In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation puts the sentence at the head of its text: “Ask for work; if they do not give you work ask for bread; if they do not give you work or bread then take bread” (Marxists Internet Archive ↗).
  • 1911 — Hippolyte Havel’s “Biographic Sketch,” printed at the front of Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays, gives the fullest early account: the Manning maxim first, then the sentence, with the same “work or bread” ending (Wikisource ↗).
  • 1931 — In her autobiography Goldman recalls the moment herself, and the wording shifts: the crowd is told to demand work, then bread, and to take bread if denied both (Wikipedia ↗).
Public domain

The wording quoted here comes from two works published long before 1931 and free of US copyright: Voltairine de Cleyre’s 1893 lecture and Hippolyte Havel’s “Biographic Sketch” in the 1911 second revised edition of Anarchism and Other Essays, both freely readable online. Goldman’s own retelling in Living My Life (1931) is a separate matter — that book is still under US copyright in 2026, which is why this page describes its version rather than reprinting it.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What gets garbled

No one else claims this line — Goldman is the right speaker. What goes wrong is the wording, and where people say it comes from.

The trimmed popular version paraphrase

Both early printings — de Cleyre’s 1893 lecture and Havel’s 1911 sketch — close with “if they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.” The form that circulates online drops those two words, flattening the escalation Goldman had just built (Wikisource ↗).

“From Anarchism and Other Essays” mis-sourced

The sentence really does appear in that 1911 book — but in Hippolyte Havel’s biographical sketch, reporting a speech, not in any essay Goldman wrote. Quoting it as Goldman’s prose credits her with a sentence someone else set down (Project Gutenberg ↗).

Goldman herself, in 1931 variant

Her own memoir recalls telling the crowd to demand work, then bread, and to take bread if denied both — a different verb and a different shape from the 1893 and 1911 printings. Two of the versions in circulation trace back to her; they do not match (Wikipedia ↗).

Emma Goldman generally magnet

Her single most-quoted line — the one about not wanting a revolution she can’t dance at — is a modern paraphrase spun out of a passage in her memoir, not anything she actually wrote. Goldman attracts invented aphorisms, which is exactly why the genuine ones deserve a citation (Wikiquote ↗).

The idea, and very likely the sentence, are genuinely Goldman’s — spoken in Union Square in August 1893 and printed by her comrades within months. But every surviving version is somebody’s report, and the neatest one is the least well attested (Wikisource ↗).

Context

Why it mattered

Havel’s sketch sets the scene plainly: the country was in the throes of a crisis, and thousands of unemployed crowded the streets of the large industrial centres. Goldman was one of the invited speakers at a Union Square demonstration of striking cloakmakers and the jobless, and she built to the line by first quoting Cardinal Manning — that necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbour’s bread. Borrowing a cardinal’s authority before telling a hungry crowd to take bread was the rhetorical move, and it worked.

It also cost her. Days afterwards she was arrested in Philadelphia and brought back to New York on a charge of inciting to riot; a jury convicted her, and she served ten months of a one-year sentence on Blackwell’s Island (Wikipedia ↗). That prosecution is the reason the sentence is so well remembered and so poorly documented at the same time: what mattered legally was what witnesses said she said, and the surviving versions of that do not quite agree.

“Necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbor’s bread.” — Cardinal Manning, as Goldman quoted him first

Why there is no transcript

Goldman spoke from notes she abandoned on the spot — she recalled that the prepared text looked cold once she saw the crowd. What exists instead is a set of reports: newspaper accounts, police testimony at her trial, her comrades’ printed versions, and, nearly four decades later, her own memory. Where they converge is the escalation — work, then bread, then take it — and the Manning quotation that licensed it. Where they diverge is the verb and the final clause.

That is the honest shape of the evidence, and it is why this page says “attributed” rather than “verified.” The thought is unambiguously Goldman’s. The exact fourteen words in circulation are one editor’s tidy-up of a sentence that was already secondhand.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Justice Courage Freedom

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Havel's "Biographic Sketch" (1911)en.wikisource.org

The fullest early account of the Union Square speech, printed at the front of Goldman's own book, ending with the sentence in full.
Anarchism and Other Essays — full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg's public-domain edition, carrying the same Union Square passage and Goldman's essays.
In Defense of Emma Goldman (1893)marxists.org

Voltairine de Cleyre's lecture from the year of the speech, which takes the sentence as its epigraph.
Emma Goldman — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Dates the speech to 21 August 1893, gives the conflicting versions, and covers the arrest, trial and sentence.
Emma Goldman — First Amendment Encyclopediafirstamendment.mtsu.edu

Middle Tennessee State University's free-speech reference on the conviction for inciting a riot and the one-year sentence.
Emma Goldman — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced and disputed Goldman quotations, including the note that her famous dancing line is a paraphrase.

The speaker

Who was Emma Goldman?

Emma Goldman

1869–1940 · Anarchist orator, writer & agitator

Emma Goldman was among the most famous — and most surveilled — radicals in American public life, a lecturer and essayist whose speeches on labour, free speech and women’s autonomy drew crowds and police in roughly equal numbers. The Union Square address of August 1893 brought her a prison term: convicted of inciting to riot, she served ten months of a one-year sentence on Blackwell’s Island. Her writing survives in the collection Anarchism and Other Essays and, much later, in the autobiography Living My Life.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this page

Hippolyte Havel, “Biographic Sketch,” in Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, 2nd rev. ed. (1911), 25 — reporting Goldman’s Union Square speech, New York, 21 August 1893. An earlier printing of the sentence appears in Voltairine de Cleyre, In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation (1893).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you bread, then take bread’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/ask-for-work-if-they-do-not-give-you-work-ask-for-bread-if/

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