“No human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest.”

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.

You can’t do it unless you organize.

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.

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.

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.

No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.

To make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.

To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.

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.

Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.

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.

Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.

Workingmen are at the foundation of society.

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.

No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money

Show me the country that has no strikes and I’ll show you the country in which there is no liberty.

Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

That’s what I loved about show business, no two days were alike. It’s an exciting life.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern … Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

The doors of churches, hotels, concert halls and reading rooms are alike closed against the Negro as a man, but every place is open to him as a servant.

Oldtimers, weekends, and airplane landings are alike. If you can walk away from them, they’re successful.

I’ve come to the conclusion that players want to be treated alike.

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.