Child Labour Quotes

• Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves... They do everything but watch television.

  Lewis Thomas

  Children, War, Army

  "A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays".

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• It's estimated that there may be two hundred and fifty million children in the world engaged in some form of exploitative child labour.

  Carol Bellamy

  Children, Two, Engagement

  54 Copy quote

• Feeding a child at school is such a simple thing - but it works miracles.

  Drew Barrymore

  Children, School, Simple

  17 Copy quote

• Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth and other social problems.

  Kailash Satyarthi

  Children, Population Problem, Growth

  70 Copy quote

• Child labour is an issue of grave importance. It must become a top priority for all governments of the world. How can the world move into the twenty-first century with children still being exploited for their labour and denied their basic right to an education?

  Craig Kielburger

  Children, Moving, Issues

  Craig Kielburger (2010). “Free The Children”, p.57, Greystone Books

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• Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.

  Grace Abbott

  Children, Labor Day, Together

  91 Copy quote

• A lot of work still remains but I will see the end of child labor in my lifetime.

  Kailash Satyarthi

  Children, Slave Labor, Slavery

  "Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi win Nobel Peace Prize". www.foxnews.com. October 10, 2014.

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• In the 19th century, a lot of people were against outlawing child labour, because to do so would be against the very foundations of a free market economy: 'These children want to work, these people want to employ them... what is your problem? It's not as if anyone has kidnapped them...'

  Brian Eno

  Children, People, Would Be

  52 Copy quote

• If we can't begin to agree on fundamentals, such as the elimination of the most abusive forms of child labor, then we really are not ready to march forward into the future.

  Alexis Herman

  Children, Fundamentals, March

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• Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Pain, Children, Rights

  "Trayvon Martin Case Reminds Us: Never Be Silent" by Ingrid Newkirk, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 17, 2012.

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• We must ensure that while eliminating child labor in the export industry, we are also eliminating their labour from the informal sector, which is more invisible to public scrutiny - and thus leaves the children more open to abuse and exploitation.

  Carol Bellamy

  Children, Abuse, Invisible

  21 Copy quote

• New legislation has just been adopted by the International Labour Organization on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, such as bonded labour, prostitution and hazardous work.

  Carol Bellamy

  Children, Organization, Child Labor

  18 Copy quote

• ...180 million kids are engaged in the worst forms of child labour. Put it all together and it is not only morally unacceptable, but politically dangerous.

  Juan Somavia

  Children, Kids, Acceptance

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• After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it - removing that advantage for all firms.

  Barry Commoner

  Children, Economic, Child Labor

  Interview With Alan Hall, www.scientificamerican.com. June 23, 1997.

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• They (the novelists) became the voice of the citizen against the ubiquitous raison d'état, which reappeared endlessly to justify everything from unjust laws and the use of child labour to incompetent generalship and inhuman conditions on warships.
  The themes they popularized have gradually turned into the laws which, for all their flaws, have improved the state of man.

  John Ralston Saul

  Children, Men, Voice

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• What made women's labour particularly attractive to the capitalists was not only its lower price but also the greater submissiveness of women. The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labour must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible. In the same manner the capitalists use child labour to depress women's wages and the work of machines to depress all human labour.

  Clara Zetkin

  Depressing, Children, Two

  35 Copy quote

• Nearly one billion women and men, a third of the world's workforce, are either unemployed or unable to earn enough to keep themselves out of extreme poverty. There are 100 million new entrants into the labour market each year. Up to 90 percent in some regions are in the informal economy. 180 million kids are engaged in the worst forms of child labour. Put it all together and it is not only morally unacceptable, but politically dangerous

  Juan Somavia

  Children, Kids, Men

  8 Copy quote