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Who really said it

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law

Not Goldman’s words — a condensed paraphrase Emma Goldman 1869–1940 · anarchist orator, writer and editor of Mother Earth
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Goldman argued exactly this — but not in these words. Addressing the jury at her Espionage Act trial in New York on 9 July 1917 she said “Never can a new idea move within the law… The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, ‘a chariot wheel’ which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition.” No source has ever been produced for the tidier sentence in circulation: it is in neither that address nor Anarchism and Other Essays, the book usually credited, and Wikiquote files it as unsourced ↗, calling it a gloss on the address.

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

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law” Emma Goldman, Address to the Jury, U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, New York, July 9, 1917: "Never can a new idea move within the law… How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a chariot wheel' which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition." The widely circulated line "No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law…" is an unsourced condensation of this passage, not a transcript. — Quotle.info

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In context

Evoking the themes of change, creativity and courage. Theme: "No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

What she actually said to the jury

Speech
Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
Delivered
9 July 1917 · U.S. District Court, New York City
Charge
Conspiracy to “induce persons not to register” for the draft, under the Espionage Act of 1917
Popular wording
Unsourced — a condensation, with no source ever produced

I could continue to enumerate almost endlessly the hosts of men and women in every land and in every period whose ideas and ideals redeemed the world because they were not within the law. Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression — to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, “a chariot wheel” which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul. Address to the Jury, 9 July 1917

The circulating quotation compresses this into five clipped sentences, replaces “Never can a new idea move” with “No great idea in its beginning can ever be,” and turns a law that “grinds all alike” into one that “binds us all.”

Read the full Address to the Jury on Wikisource

How we checked

  • Wikiquote ↗ keeps the popular wording in its unsourced list, with the note that it “appears to be a gloss on Goldman’s address to the jury in 1917.”
  • The address itself is preserved on Wikisource ↗, which dates it to 9 July 1917, and independently on the Marxists Internet Archive ↗. Both read “Never can a new idea move within the law” and call the law “a chariot wheel” that “grinds all alike.”
  • Quote sites pin the line on Anarchism and Other Essays, but the Project Gutenberg text ↗ of that 1910 collection does not contain the phrase “within the law” anywhere.
  • Goldman retold the same courtroom argument in Living My Life (1931): “I pointed out that there had never been an ideal, however humane and peaceful, which in its time had been considered ‘within the law.’” (Wikiquote, sourced ↗)

The address behind the line is an American text of 1917 and is long out of US copyright — both Wikisource and the Marxists Internet Archive reproduce it in full. The condensed wording that circulates on posters and quote sites, however, has no identified author, publication or date, so we assert no rights status for that phrasing.

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 the quote sites get wrong

The line is genuine Goldman in substance and invented Goldman in wording — and the quote sites that carry it cannot agree on where it came from.

“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law…” paraphrase

No source has ever been produced for this sentence: it is in neither her 1917 address to the jury nor Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), the two texts the citations point to. Wikiquote lists it as unsourced ↗ and notes that it “appears to be a gloss on Goldman’s address to the jury in 1917.”

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) wrong book

Goodreads credits the book ↗, but the phrase “within the law” does not occur once in the full 1910 text ↗.

“Address to the Jury, in Mother Earth, July 17, 1917” wrong day

LibQuotes ↗ names the right speech but the wrong date: Goldman addressed the jury on 9 July 1917 ↗.

Goldman really did tell a New York jury that no new idea can move within the law, and really did call the law “a chariot wheel” — on 9 July 1917 ↗. The sentence people quote is somebody else’s tidy-up of hers.

Context

A courtroom, a draft, and a judge’s instruction

In June 1917 Goldman and Alexander Berkman were arrested for their work with the No Conscription League and charged under the newly passed Espionage Act with conspiring to “induce persons not to register” for the draft. During jury selection the judge told the panel that unpopular opinions were fine so long as they were “within the law” — and Goldman built her closing address around that phrase, turning the court’s own test back on it.

The jury convicted them. Each was given the maximum: two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. After release they were swept up in the Palmer Raids and, in December 1919, deported to Russia (Wikipedia ↗). The speech survived the sentence, and a compressed version of one paragraph of it has outlived both.

Never can a new idea move within the law.

Where the “chariot wheel” came from

Goldman put “a chariot wheel” inside quotation marks in 1917, which reads as borrowing an image rather than coining one. Seven years earlier, in the essay on modern drama in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) ↗, she had quoted John Galsworthy’s play Justice: “The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him.” Whether that is the phrase she had in mind at her trial is not documented anywhere — it is simply the earliest place she is on record using the image. She returned to it four years later in The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914) ↗, where the chariot runs through her own prose as well as Galsworthy’s: the woman Falder loves, she writes, “had been driven by the chariot wheel of Justice to sell herself.”

The paraphrase also flattens what she said. Goldman’s law “grinds all alike”; the quote-site version has it “bind us all.” And her point was broader than politics: science, literature and music, she told the jury, must equally “refuse to move within the law.”

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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.

Address to the Jury (full text)en.wikisource.org

Goldman’s complete 9 July 1917 courtroom speech, including the “chariot wheel” passage.
Address to the Jurymarxists.org

A second, independent transcription of the same 1917 address for cross-checking the wording.
Talk:Emma Goldman — unsourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Where the popular wording sits, filed as unsourced and identified as a gloss on the 1917 address.
Emma Goldman — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Goldman quotations with citations, including her own retelling of the trial speech in Living My Life (1931).
Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)gutenberg.org

The collection quote sites credit for the line — searchable, and the phrase “within the law” is not in it.
Emma Goldmanen.wikipedia.org

Biography and the details of the 1917 Espionage Act conviction and the 1919 deportation.

The speaker behind the paraphrase

Who Emma Goldman was

Emma Goldman

1869–1940 · Anarchist orator, writer and editor of Mother Earth

Born in Kaunas in 1869 and an emigrant to the United States in 1885, Emma Goldman became the most notorious anarchist orator in America, founding the journal Mother Earth in 1906 and lecturing on free speech, birth control and the war. In 1917 she and Alexander Berkman were convicted of conspiring to “induce persons not to register” for the draft; the judge imposed the maximum — two years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine each — and in December 1919 she was deported to Russia. She died in Toronto in 1940.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Emma Goldman, “Address to the Jury,” delivered in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, U.S. District Court, New York, 9 July 1917; full text at Wikisource and the Marxists Internet Archive. The popular wording — “No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law…” — is an unsourced condensation of that passage, not a transcript of it.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/no-great-idea-in-its-beginning-can-ever-be-within-the-law/

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