No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
SAMUEL GOMPERSIn the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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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.
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No human being is unimportant. My inspiration comes in opening opportunities that all alike may be free to live life to the fullest.
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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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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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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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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 working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
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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.
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Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
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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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To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
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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.
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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle . . . present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.
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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 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 movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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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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So long as there is one [person] who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.
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The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
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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.
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To make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
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In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers.
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[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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS