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 GOMPERSYou can’t do it unless you organize.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment.
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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
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So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service.
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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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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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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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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 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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The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
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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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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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No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money
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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.
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS