Workers and Unions Quotes
Top 30 Workers and Unions
Quotes
No 1 (Best quote!)![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-niebuhr.jpg)
Conflict is inevitable and in this conflict power must be challenged by power,
- Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1901)
American theologian, pictured right.
No 2![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-marx.jpg)
Workers of the world, unite!
- Karl Marx, pictured right, and
Friedrich Engels, pictured right below, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-engels.jpg)
Marx and Engels add:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,
![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-lenin.jpg)
The Russian communist leader, Lenin (1870-1924), pictured right, also comments:
In its struggle for power the proletariat [i.e. the workers] has no other weapon but organization.
No 3![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-bevin.jpg)
The most conservative man in this world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him,
- Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), British Labour politician and trade unionist, pictured right.
No 4![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotesfeath.jpg)
Industrial relations are like sexual relations. It's better between two consenting parties.
- Vic Feather (1908-76), British trade union leader, pictured right.
No 5![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotesduck.jpg)
Let those who feast at ease on dainty fare,
Pity the reapers, who their feasts prepare.
(from the 1730 poem The Thresher's Labour (1730)
- Stephen Duck (c1705-1756), pictured right above, English poet.
No 6![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-elliott-ebenezer.jpg)
What is a communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings.
(from the 1850 poem Epigram)
- Ebenezer Elliott (1789-1849), pictured right, English poet.
No 7![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-jevons.jpg)
All classes of society are trades unionists at heart, and differ chiefly in the boldness, ability, and secrecy
with which they pursue their respective interests.
- W. Stanley Jevons (1835–82), English economist, pictured right.
No 8![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-roosevelt-fd.jpg)
These unhappy times call for the building of plans that…build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that
put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), American
president, pictured right.
No 9![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-dickens.jpg)
The masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin to work hard in peace, and
do what he felt right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no mind of his own?,
(Rachael in Hard Times)
- Charles Dickens (1812-70), English
writer, pictured right.
No 10![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-stowe.jpg)
I’ll give ye all the work of my hands ... but my soul I won’t give up,
Tom (to Legree, on refusing to beat another slave) in the 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96), pictured right, American writer.
No 11![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-owen-robert.jpg)
The lowest stage of humanity is explained when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from
others.
- Robert Owen (1771-1858), Welsh factory
owner, pictured right.
No 12![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-simpson-homer.jpg)
If you don’t like your job, you don’t strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the
American way.
- Homer Simpson, pictured right,. in the
American TV series, The Simpsons.
No 13![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-braverman.jpg)
The mass of humanity is subjected to the labour process for the purposes of those who control it rather than for
any general purposes of “humanity” as such.
- Harry Braverman, pictured right, Labour and Monopoly
Capitalism (1974)
No 14![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-flanders.jpg)
Trade unions have always had two faces, sword of justice and vested interest.
- Allan Flanders, pictured right, Management and Unions
(1970).
No 15![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotesmate.jpg)
Employees don’t vote for a union, they vote against management.
- Ken Matejka, pictured right., in Why This Horse Won’t Drink
(1991)
No 16![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-pfeffer.jpg)
The effects of unions depend very much on what management does,
- Jeffrey Pfeffer, pictured right, in Competitive Advantage
Through People (1994)
![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-harvey-jones.jpg)
John Harvey-Jones (1924-2008), pictured right,
boss of the British chemical company ICI 1982-7, agrees:
When you know something’s wrong, nine times out of ten it’s the management – in truth because people aren’t
being led right,
No 17![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-monks.jpg)
We aim to be part of the answer, not part of the problem.
- John Monks (1945- ), British 1990’s union boss, pictured right.
No 18![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-hope.jpg)
I think union rules are a little strict. I used to sing in the bath tub at home, now I’ve got to have another
guy in there with me as a stand-by.
- Bob Hope (1903-2003), American comedian, pictured right.
No 19![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-roosevelt-fd.jpg)
No business which depends for its existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to
continue in this country.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), American
president, pictured right.
![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-friedman-milton.jpg)
No 20
When labour unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher
wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced.![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotesfrieros.jpg)
Milton and Rose Friedman, pictured right, Free To
Choose (1980).
No 21![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-brandeis.jpg)
Our employers can no more afford to be absolute masters of their employees than they can submit to the mastery
of their employees...The spirit must be 'Come, let us reason together',
- Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), American lawyer and writer, pictured right.
No 22![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-roddick.jpg)
You only need unions when mangement are bastards.
- Anita Roddick (1942-2007),
English founder of The Body Shop, pictured right.
No 23![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-marx.jpg)
Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour.
- Karl Marx (1818-83), German
philosopher, pictured right
No 24![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-reuther.jpg)
Fight for the welfare of the public at large.
- Walter Reuther (1907-70), American
union leader, pictured right
![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quoteslask.jpg)
Harold Laski (1893-1950), the English political writer and professor, pictured right,
agrees:
The meek do not inherit the earth unless they are prepared to fight for their meekness.
No 25![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-orwell.jpg)
Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one
is the prosperity of the others.
(Old Major in the 1945 novel Animal
Farm)
- George Orwell (1903-50) , pictured right, English writer
No 26![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotesgruff.jpg)
Have your union. You need it. Alone you are weak. Together you are strong. But remember, with strength goes
responsibility - to others and to yourselves.
- Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon, pictured right, in the 1942 film How Green Was My Valley)
No 27![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-follett.jpg)
Capital and labour must fight or unite.
- Mary Parker Follett, pictured right,
Dynamic Administration
(1941)
No 28![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-carlyle.jpg)
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish writer and philosopher (pictured right).
No 29![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotesloveless.jpg)
We raise the watch-word liberty. We will, we will, we will be free!,
- George Loveless (1797-1874), one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs after being convicted of joining a
union (pictured right).
No
30![Workers and Unions Quotes Workers and Unions Quotes](images/quotes-reuther.jpg)
There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men. There is no greater contribution than to help
the weak.
- Walter Reuther (1907-70), American
union leader, pictured right.
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