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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSNo race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . .
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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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[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.
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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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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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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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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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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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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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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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The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.
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You can’t do it unless you organize.
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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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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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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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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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Workingmen are at the foundation of society.
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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.
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Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
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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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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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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 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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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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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
SAMUEL GOMPERS