Susan B. Anthony

• Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.
• Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

Cesar Chavez

• The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.
• Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity?
• The end of all education should surely be service to others.
• You are never strong enough that you do not need help.

Jimmy Carter

• Every advance in this half-century:  Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education...  one after another- came with the support and leadership of American Labor.
• All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.

Clarence Darrow

• With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
• You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.

Eugene Debs

• Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
• Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.
• 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.

Frederick Douglass

• Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.
• If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
• It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

Dwight Eisenhower

• Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice.
• Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.
• Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
• What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight- it's the size of the fight in the dog.
• May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Henry George

• Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.

Samuel Gompers

• 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.
• You can't do it unless you organize.
• Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people.
• Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
• 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.
• The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.

Thomas Jefferson

• A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.

Mother Jones

• My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: "We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.
• Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped.
• We must learn to live together as brothers or we are going to perish together as fools.
• All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
• 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. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.
• History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.
• In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped.
  

Lane Kirkland

• If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.
• Don't believe that winning is really everything. It's more important to stand for something. If you don't stand for something, what do you win?

Knights of Labor

• An injury to one is the concern of all.

John L. Lewis

• Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.
• The labor movement is organized upon a principle that the strong shall help the weak. The strength of a strong man is a prideful thing, but the unfortunate thing in life is that strong men do not remain strong. And it is just as true of unions and labor organizations as is true of men and individuals. And whereas today the craft unions of this country may be able to stand upon their own feet and like mighty oaks stand before the gale, defy the lightning, yet the day may come when those organizations will not be able to withstand the lightning and the gale. Now, prepare yourselves by making a contribution to your less fortunate brethren... Organize the unorganized!
• Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

Abraham Lincoln

• Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
• The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds.
• All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.

John Locke

• All wealth is the product of labor.

Wendell Phillips

• The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
• Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.

A. Phillip Randolph

• 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 community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

• It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that is have free and independent labor unions.
• Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
• Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.
• If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.
• If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.
• Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.
• Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.
• The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

Adam Smith

• Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.
• No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

Sophocles

• Without labor nothing prospers.