Harry Bridges Quotations

There will always be a place for us somewhere, somehow, as long as we see to it that working people fight for everything they have, everything they hope to get, for dignity, equality, democracy, to oppose war and to bring to the world a better life.

Everything is produced by the workers, and the minute they try to get something by their unions they meet all the opposition that can be mustered by those who now get what they produce.

Neither, I must say with all due respect, is it the power of teachers and students. Basically the true and real power is with working people of all colors, of all beliefs, of all national origins.

I'm a working stiff. I just happened to be around at the right time, and nobody else wanted the job.

There is a weapon we can fight with. That is the weapon of political action.

Im a machine man, and I head a machine.

I would have worked with the devil himself if he'd been for the six hour day and worker control of the hiring hall.

Labor cannot stand still. It must not retreat. It must go on, or go under.

No man has ever been born a Negro hater, a Jew hater, or any other kind of hater. Nature refuses to be involved in such suicidal practices.

Finally, it was about how people treat one another. It was about human dignity. We forced the employers to treat us as equals, to sit down and talk to us about the work we do, how we do it, and what we get paid for it. And I believe that the principles for which we fought in 1934 are still true and still useful. Whether your job is pushing a four-wheeler, or programming a computer, I don't know of any way for working people to win basic economic justice and dignity except by being organized into a solid, democratic union.

The most important word in the language of the working class is "solidarity."