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 GOMPERSYou can’t weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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Show me the country that has no strikes and I’ll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
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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.
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Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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Let social busybodies and professional “public morals experts” in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
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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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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
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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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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS