Samuel Gompers Quotes (16 Quotes)

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.

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.

Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.

Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.

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.

No race of barbarians ever existed yet offered up children for money.

The day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed ... that the workers of our day lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it.

Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busybodies and professional 'public morals experts' in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.

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.

We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor.

It is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests.

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,

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.

Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.

So long as there is one person who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.

Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better men, time to become better women, time to become better and more independent citizens.