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

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.

Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.

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

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.

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

It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.

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.

So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service.

[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.

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.

The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.

So long as there is one [person] who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.

A writer’s occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business.