Show me the country that has no strikes and I’ll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
SAMUEL GOMPERSThe 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.
More Samuel Gompers Quotes
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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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The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.
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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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There are such wonderful possibilities in the life of each man and woman!
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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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You can’t weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.
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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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To free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.
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It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.
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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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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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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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You can’t do it unless you organize.
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No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.
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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.
SAMUEL GOMPERS