Eugene V. Debs Quotes
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Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
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It is when you have done your work honestly, when you have contributed your share to the common fund that you begin to live.
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Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation.
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Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.
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The general public knows practically nothing about the prison and appears to be little concerned about how it is managed and how prisoners are treated.
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What can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command.
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The American people can have anything they want; the trouble is, they don't know what they want.
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Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.
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A prison is a cross section of society in which every human strain is clearly revealed.
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No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
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The prison, above all others, should be the most human of institutions.
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Why should the railroad employees be parceled out among a score of different organizations? They are all employed in the same service. Their interests are mutual. They ought to be able to act together as one. But they divide according to craft and calling, and if you were to propose today to unite them that they might actually do something to advance their collective and individual interests as workers, you would be opposed by every grand officer of these organizations.
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If I were hungry and friendless today, I would rather take my chances with a saloon-keeper than with the average preacher.
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Speaking of myself, I was made to realize long ago that the old trade union was utterly incompetent to deal successfully with the exploiting corporations in this struggle. I was made to see that in craft unionism the capitalist class have it within their power to keep the workers divided, to use one part of them to conquer and crush another part of them. Indeed, I was made to see that the old form of unionism separates the workers and keeps them helpless at the mercy of their masters.
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The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.
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A man should take to himself no discomfort from an opinion expressed or implied by his adversary, but it is difficult, and oftentimes humiliating to attempt to justify the kindness of one's friends.
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The most heroic word in all languages is REVOLUTION.
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I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything I do not think.
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The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.
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We want a system in which the worker shall get what he produces and the capitalist shall produce what he gets.