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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSIt is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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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
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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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You can’t do it unless you organize.
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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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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
SAMUEL GOMPERS