No human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest.
SAMUEL GOMPERSNo race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
Let social busybodies and professional “public morals experts” in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
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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To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
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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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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 -
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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS -
You can’t weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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To make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
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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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Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.
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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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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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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS






