The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
SAMUEL GOMPERSLet social busybodies and professional “public morals experts” in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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Do I believe in arbitration? I do. But not in arbitration between the lion and the lamb, in which the lamb is in the morning found inside the lion
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Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
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To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work.
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There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.
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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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One fact stands out in bold relief in the history of man’s attempts for betterment. That is that when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused, and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to man’s reason can a movement succeed.
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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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No human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest.
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Let social busybodies and professional “public morals experts” in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
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The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.
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W.Z. Foster {head of the American Communist Party}, who had no money, went to Moscow and came back and announced that he was building a great secret machine to undermine the American labor movement and turn it over to the Red International, owned by Lenin.
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The right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong.
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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers… It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.
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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
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Our mission has been the protection of the wage-worker, now; to increase his wages; to cut hours off the long workday, which was killing him; to improve the safety and the sanitary conditions of the workshop.
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We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
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You can’t do it unless you organize.
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The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease.
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There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.
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All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Dayis devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.
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Show me that product of human endeavor in the making of which the workingman has had no share, and I will show you something that society can well dispense with.
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The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
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So long as there is one [person] who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.
SAMUEL GOMPERS