Eugene V. Debs
One glance proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these unions (railroad craft unions) are exceedingly useful to the corporations; and to the extent that they serve the economic and political purposes of the corporations, they are the foes – and not the friends – of the working class.Collection: Class
The guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.Collection: Wall
I would no more teach children military training than teach them arson, robbery, or assassination.Collection: Children
Nothing is more humiliating than to have to beg for work, and a system in which any man has to beg for work stands condemned. No man can defend it.Collection: Men
I am guilty of believing that the human race can be humanized and enriched in every spiritual inference through the saner and more beneficent processes of peaceful persuasion applied to material problems rather than through wars, riots and bloodshed.Collection: Spiritual
The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.Collection: Rights
Some go to prison for stealing, and others for believing that a better system can be provided and maintained than one that makes it necessary for a man to steal in order to live.Collection: Believe
Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.Collection: War
No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.Collection: Peace
I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything I do not think.Collection: Thinking
The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society - we are on the eve of universal change.Collection: Civilization
When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other's throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known.Collection: Brother
Riches are the savings of many in the hands of one.Collection: Hands
They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.Collection: Peace
You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political party and strike and vote together, and the hour you do that, the world is yours.Collection: Party
Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.Collection: Intelligent
I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out.Collection: Business
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.Collection: War
Anybody can be nobody; but it takes a man to be somebody.Collection: Greatness
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.Collection: Honesty
If I were hungry and friendless today, I would rather take my chances with a saloon-keeper than with the average preacher.Collection: Average
If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.Collection: Life
The American people can have anything they want; the trouble is, they don't know what they want.Collection: People
I would rather be arrested as a traitor than fight a war for Wall Street.Collection: Wall
As long as this great army of workers is scattered among so many craft unions, it will be impossible for them to unite and act in harmony together. Craft unionism is the negation of solidarity. The more unions you have, the less unity.Collection: Army
In the very progress of society, the prison has in the very nature of things undergone some improvement, but there are vast stretches yet to be covered before the prison becomes, if it ever does, an institution for the reclamation and rehabilitation of erring and unfortunate men and women.Collection: Men