Mother Jones Quotations

I believe that no man who holds a leader's position should ever accept favors from either side. He is then committed to show favors. A leader must stand alone.

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

If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I will shout Freedom for the working class!

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.

The miners lost because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit!

Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination

Injustice boils in men's hearts as does steel in its cauldron, ready to pour forth, white hot, in the fullness of time.

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

And who is responsible for this appalling child slavery? Everyone.

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

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

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?

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

That is, the wife must care for what the husband cares for if he is to remain resolute.

Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads

I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!

God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.

I learned in the early part of my career that labor must bear the cross for others' sins, must be the vicarious sufferer for the wrongs that others do.

Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.

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

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

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

I went West and took part in the strike of the machinists - the Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporation that swung California by its golden tail, that controlled its legislature, its farmers, its preachers, its workers.

I will tell the truth wherever I please.

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 blind to the shortcomings of our own people.

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

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'm not afraid of the press or the Militia.

We must stand together; if we don't, there will be no victory for any one of us.

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.

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!

I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people. I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false. But this knowledge does not outweigh the fact that my class, the working class, is exploited, driven, fought back with the weapon of starvation, with guns and with venal courts whenever they strike for conditions more human, more civilized for their children, and for their children's children.

I know that there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery

Freedom for the working class!

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

Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent.

I was born in revolution.

I want to hold a series of meetings all over the country and get the facts before the American people

I have always advised men to read

You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand

Out of labor's struggle in Arizona came better conditions for the workers, who must everywhere, at all times, under advantage and disadvantage work out their own salvation

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

Not all the coal that is dug warms the world.

...Poetic injustice...having made over Japan in our own image. The Japanese, ...are now, next to us, the greatest consumers of meat in the world.

I want you to pledge to yourselves in this convention to stand as one solid army against the foes of human labor. Think of the thousands who are killed every year and there is no redress for it. We will fight until the mines are made secure and human life valued more than props. Look things in the face. Don't' fear a governor; don't fear anybody. You pay the governor; he has the right to protect you. You are the biggest part of the population in the state. You create its wealth, so I say, let the fight go on; if nobody else will keep on, I will.

Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands.

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.

No matter what the fight, don't be ladylike!

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.

I preferred sewing to bossing little children.

I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly where. My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression. My address is like my shoes; it travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.

The militant not the meek shall inherit the earth!

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.

My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.

Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living

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

I'm not a lady, I'm a hellraiser

The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.