“Our very lives are dependent, for sustenance, on the sweat and sacrifice of the campesinos. Children of farm workers should be as proud of their parents’ professions as other children are of theirs.”

You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read.

You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men!

Nonviolence is really tough. You don’t practice nonviolence at conferences; you practice it on picket-lines.

The people united will never be defeated.

When any person suffers for someone in greater need, that person is a human.

We believe that unions have always been about much more than the industries in which they operate. The fight is never about grapes or lettuce, It is always about people.

In the no-nonsense school of adversity, which we did not choose for ourselves, we are learning how to operate a labor union.

Those who are willing to sacrifice and be of service have very little difficulty with people. They know what they are all about. People can’t help but want to be near them. They help them; they work with them. That’s what love is all about. It starts with your heart and radiates out.

Every time we sit at a table at night or in the morning to enjoy the fruits and grain and vegetables from our good earth, remember that they come from the work of men and women and children who have been exploited for generations.

The people who give you their food give you their heart.

In this world it is possible to achieve great material wealth, to live an opulent life. But a life built upon those things alone leaves a shallow legacy. In the end, we will be judged by other standards.

There’s no reason to be non-violent. There’s no challenge unless you are living for people.

Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak. Non-violence is hard work.

If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.

The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.

Yet they that know all things but know That all this life can give us is, A child’s laughter, a woman’s kiss.

He who can reach a child’s heart can reach the worlds heart.

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time.

I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.

It takes so little to make a child happy, that it is a pity in a world full of sunshine and pleasant things, that there should be any wistful faces, empty hands, or lonely little hearts.