Labor Movement Quotes

• The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Progress, Despair, Movement

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Michael K. Honey (2011). “All Labor Has Dignity”, p.101, Beacon Press

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• Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. 'But notwithstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Thug, Labour Movement, Political

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• What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.

  Jim Hightower

  Mother, Kings, People

  "The Lowdown from Hightower" by Michael Winship, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 30, 2010.

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• The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women's movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights.

  Dolores Huerta

  Country, Brother, Direct Action

  "Election Day is the Most Important Day of Your Life" by Joe Baker, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 27, 2016.

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• To me, the labor movement was never just a way of getting higher wages. What appealed to me was the spiritual side of a great cause that created fellowship. You wanted the girl or the man who worked beside you to be treated just as well as you were, and an injury to one was the concern of all.

  Rose Schneiderman

  Girl, Spiritual, Men

  Rose Schneiderman, Lucy Goldthwaite (1967). “All for one”

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• When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'

  Don Marquis

  Money, Work, Men

  Quoted in Edward Anthony, O Rare Don Marquis (1962)

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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, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.

  Samuel Gompers

  Beautiful, Revenge, Book

  The Shoe workers' Journal, Volume 16‎ (p. 4), 1915.

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• With all of the talk about polling and demographics, I think too many people have lost touch with the human and moral crisis of deportations. Every day, roughly 1,000 people are deported because the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is denying the majority of the US Congress a chance to vote on citizenship. I will be arrested today because the labor movement stands with the families tragically ripped apart by John Boehner and the House Republicans’ embrace of a broken immigration system.

  Arlene Holt Baker

  Thinking, People, Broken

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• I had never before seen my friends come in beaten, their heads laid open, their noses broken, or seen them jailed for peaceably demonstrating that they wanted work. I had only known how workers lived. Now I was face to face with what our society did to workers who could get no work.

  Mary Heaton Vorse

  Broken, Unemployment, Noses

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• The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America.

  John F. Kennedy

  Labour Movement, America, Presidential

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• If we don't have workers organized into labor unions, we're in great peril of losing our democracy.

  Dolores Huerta

  Democracy, Unions, Losing

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• But, if you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement - the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery - the wage slaves - expect salvation - if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.

  August Spies

  Work, Thinking, Flames

  Address of August Spies. "The Accused the Accusers: Famous Speeches of the Chicago Anarchists in Court", www.chicagohistoryresources.org. 1886.

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• The labor movement is organized upon a principle that the strong shall help the weak.

  John L. Lewis

  Strong, Labour Movement, Principles

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• The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.

  Thomas R. Donahue

  Greed, Answers, Organized Labor

  "When Unions are Strong, Americans Enjoy the Fruits of Their Labor" by David Morris, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 8, 2011.

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• It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.

  Barack Obama

  Inspirational, Family, Retirement

  Daily Labor Report, Issues 169-189, Bureau of National Affairs, 2010.

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• The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Struggle, Government, Survival

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Michael K. Honey (2011). “All Labor Has Dignity”, p.101, Beacon Press

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• The history of the labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land. America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life. We ought to be proud of it!

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  School, Men, Land

  Address to the Minnesota State AFL-CIO Convention, 1977.

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• I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.

  Astrid Lindgren

  Labour Movement, Pioneers, Another Life

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• Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today.

  Angela Davis

  Couple, Numbers, People

  "Frontline", www.pbs.org. 1997.

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• All the time our union was progressing very nicely. There were lectures to make us understand what trades unionism is and our real position in the labor movement.

  Rose Schneiderman

  Real, Progress, Movement

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• The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

  Andy Stern

  Roles, Movement, Social

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• Labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Labour Movement, Realization, Organized Labor

  "An Ideal Labor Press". The Metal Worker, May 1904.

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• Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . . 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 Gompers

  Struggle, Order, Long

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• The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.

  Wendell Phillips

  Mean, Labour Movement, People

  Wendell Phillips (1891). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters: Second series”

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• The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.

  A. Philip Randolph

  Uplifting, Labour Movement, Essence

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