Mother Jones Quotes - Page 2

I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.

What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union.

You must stand for free speech in the streets.

I would fight God Almighty Himself if He didn't play square with me

I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false.

I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please.

a TEN-YEAR-OLD lad in Indianapolis who was arrested for picking up coal along the side of railroad tracks is now in jail. If the boy had known enough to steal the whole railroad he would be heralded as a Napoleon of finance.

Your ancestors fought for you to have a share in that institution over there. It's yours. See the school board, and every Friday night hold your meetings there. Have your wives clean it up Saturday morning for the children to enter Monday. Your organization is not a praying institution. It's a fighting institution. It's an educational institution along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!

All the average human being asks is something he can call a home; a family that is fed and warm; and now and then a little happiness; once in a long while an extravagance.

I'm not a humanitarian, I'ma hell-raiser.

My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.

Freedom for the working class!

I have always advised men to read

Not all the coal that is dug warms the world.

I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people.

Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.

I'm not afraid of the press or the Militia.

But in Shimabukuro's hands, as he breaks out experimental jazz, lays down a steady blues train, or shreds on rock anthems, this little jumping flea becomes a melodic monster.

Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives

Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures; that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men

What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow.

I am Mother Jones. The Government can't take my life and you can't take my arm, but you can take my suitcase.

I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.

I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag.

My teachers treated me as a diamond in the rough, someone who needed smoothing.