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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSSo long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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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.
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
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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[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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle . . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.
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To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.
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Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
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In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers.
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS