Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better men, time to become better women, time to become better and more independent citizens.
SAMUEL GOMPERSThe labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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 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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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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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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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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To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
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To make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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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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[The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves.
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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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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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