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.
SAMUEL GOMPERSTime 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.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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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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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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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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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 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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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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The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
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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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Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.
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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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You can’t weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
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