Workers Quotes - Page 27

• Obviously, our business leaders yield enormous influence on our political leaders, and they have a duty to use that influence for the greater good. But beyond that, the private sector depends on having healthy, educated and productive workers.

  Shakira

  Yield, Leader, Political

  Source: www.americasquarterly.org

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• Like most terms of political discourse, socialism has more or less, lost its meaning. Socialism used to mean something. If you go back far enough it meant basically control of production by producers, elimination of wage labor, democratization of all spheres of life; production, commerce, education, media, workers control of factories, community control of communities, and so on. That was socialism once. But it hasn't meant that for a hundred years. Socialism meant something different.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Media, Years

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• In fact, what were called the socialist countries in Eastern Europe were the most anti-socialist systems in the world. Workers had more rights in the United States and England than they had in Russia, and it was somehow still called socialism.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Russia, Rights

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• Policies are designed to undermine working class organization and the reason is not only the unions fight for workers' rights, but they also have a democratizing effect. These are institutions in which people without power can get together, support one another, learn about the world, try out their ideas, initiate programs, and that is dangerous. That's like a referendum in Greece. It is dangerous to allow that.

  Noam Chomsky

  Fighting, Class, Organization

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• In the 1960s, various parts of the population became energized and began to enter the public arena to call for the rights of women, students, young people, old people, farmers and workers. What are called "special interests" - meaning the whole population - they began to press to enter the public arena. And they said that puts too much pressure on the state and therefore we have to have more moderation in democracy and they should go back and be quiet and obedient.

  Noam Chomsky

  Rights, People, Democracy

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I still believe that workers must be the basic force which must organize and eventually transform society (along with peasants in poor countries). This is because they are the source of the profits which make capitalism what it is. They can shut the system down, and at the same time they possess the unique knowledge needed to make it work in everyone's interests.

  Michael Yates

  Country, Believe, Unique

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Most young people are or will soon enough be workers. They can help to energize and radicalize the workers' movement. And what revolution has ever succeeded without youth?

  Michael Yates

  Soon Enough, People, Movement

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• National chauvinism is a very tough nut to crack, since a vast propaganda network is in place to keep the workers whipped up into a patriotic frenzy. Maybe this will change, but I doubt it unless it is addressed.

  Michael Yates

  Patriotic, Nuts, Doubt

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• You can't take the view of some of the sectarian parties that hard issues can't be confronted when dealing with workers. If you don't confront these issues, what will ever change?

  Michael Yates

  Party, Views, Issues

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• You have to consider all workers as your equals and speak matter of factly about things. People do want to understand things and respect you if you know what they do not know. And you have to respect what they know that you do not.

  Michael Yates

  People, Want, Matter

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• As we move toward the pluralist commonwealth, economic interventions that stabilize communities - for instance by localizing the flows of goods and services or by promoting worker ownership - not only have immediate practical benefits but provide the necessary preconditions for the growth and development of a renewed culture of sustainable democracy that can serve as the basis for still further transformations at larger scales.

  Gar Alperovitz

  Moving, Community, Growth

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Worker ownership is only one form of democratizing ownership.

  Gar Alperovitz

  Ownership, Form

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Worker-owned co-ops, on their own, floating in the market, tend to replicate the behavior of worker-owned capitalists in some circumstances. They sometimes develop positive participatory schemes, sometimes not. We know from the studies of worker-owned plywood companies in the US, they can tend to develop conservative attitudes, not socialist attitudes. So even though I'm an advocate of further democratization of the workplace, we also need to be building larger structures.

  Gar Alperovitz

  Attitude, Needs, Floating

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• By the 20th century, war ceased to be an encounter between two armies. It became an encounter between two societies, because a factory worker producing a gun or a bomb is as deadly as a pilot.

  George Friedman

  War, Army, Gun

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• The British bombed German cities [during World War II] to keep the workers awake at night. So instead of dropping one bomb, we sent a thousand planes and, yes, we took out the factory sometimes, but we also took out the city. It reached the point where we wanted more efficient ways to destroy a city. The result was nuclear weapons.

  George Friedman

  War, Night, Cities

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lived through times of cruel and ruthless capitalism where the workers, the masses of the population, saw themselves living in a precarious state of employment and subsistence conditions. The impact of this reality took hold and impacted the evolution of the social situation of those countries and even though that produced movements that were not exactly political movements but social movements.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Country, Reality, Impact

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• What worker or peasant can pay 80 - 90 million dollars to elect a senator or 4 billion to elect a president? Only great capital can do that. That is why we say that bourgeois democracy has been evolving in the last years into dollar democracy, this is not the democracy of sovereignty, and only the people can determine that.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Years, Democracies Have, People

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• In industry, we are now concentrating our best effort in trying to make plants work at a maximum capacity, trying to replace the equipment which is in bad conditions due to lack of spare parts from the U.S.., that we cannot get from the U.S.; to extend our industry later on the basis of our primary resources. And to lessen our dependence on external markets and dedicate our efforts in 1965 to the aspect of security and hygiene of work, to make our plants better for the worker: that the worker may feel really a man there.

  Che Guevara

  Men, Hygiene, Best Effort

  Source: guevaristas.org

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• I do not imply that in the U.S plants, industrial plants, are places of exploitation where man is oppressed. 1 know that there are a great number of advantages here for too American worker.

  Che Guevara

  Men, Numbers, Plant

  Source: guevaristas.org

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• We have to dedicate our efforts to better the life, the time passed by the worker in the industrial plant. That will be one of our main efforts during the next year.

  Che Guevara

  Years, Effort, Next Year

  Source: guevaristas.org

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• Our infrastructure of bridges, roads and ports has been given a D-level rating by many civil engineer societies. The government should shift some money from the Defense budget and hire companies to fix our infrastructure. As for non-construction workers, we need to do job retraining in those growing areas where more skilled workers will be needed.

  Philip Kotler

  Jobs, Bridges, Construction Workers

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• One of the things I did during my 17 years as a psychiatric social worker was go around and find people with mental crutches, and every time I found one, I kicked those goddamn crutches until they flew. You know what happened? Every single one of those people has been able to walk without the crutches better, in fact. Were they giving up anything intrinsically valuable? Just their irrational reliance upon superstitions and supernatural nonsense. Perhaps this sort of claptrap was good for the Stone Age, when people actually believed that if they prayed for rain they would get it.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Giving Up, Rain, Years

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• I'd been a psychiatric social worker for 17 years, but within 24 hours after I started the case against studying reading Bible in school by my son, I was fired from my job as a supervisor in the city public welfare department. And I was unable to find another one. So my income was completely cut off.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Jobs, Reading, School

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• A good leader for instance is somebody like Nelson Mandela. I do not have seen such people coming every generation, maybe every ten generations, every hundred generations. People who are miracle workers.

  Chinua Achebe

  People, Leader, Miracle

  Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

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• Give the money directly to people who work hard. Instead of taking the money from the business and then filtering it through the horror of government programs, which is essentially giving it to social workers who live in Bethesda so they can drive their minivans and vote Democratic. Give them the money, so that they go and talk to the worker who is washing dishes, and they say, "Well, we want to help you, you see." And it would be better to help them by taking the money from that minivan-driving social worker and giving it directly to the guy who is really working hard by washing dishes.

  Mark Helprin

  Hard Work, Government, Giving

  Source: americasfuture.org

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