The most violent element in society is ignorance.

Goldman’s aphorism reframes “violence” as something rooted less in innate brutality than in social conditions that distort judgment. In her anarchist critique, ignorance—cultivated by poor education, propaganda, and deference to authority—makes people susceptible to fear, scapegoating, and obedience, which in turn enables both interpersonal harm and state violence. The line also implies that repression and inequality persist not only through force but through the public’s inability (or refusal) to understand their causes. Read this way, the quote is a call for intellectual emancipation: expanding knowledge and critical thinking is presented as a practical antidote to social conflict and coercion.