Cesar Chavez Quotes

We were no experts in the field of labor organization, but we had something in common with our fellow workers -- we were all poor -- we were all overworked -- we were all victims of the 84 hour week. In fact, we were all so low down on the economic and social ladder that we had nowhere to go but up

The workingmen have been exploited all the way up and down the line by employers, landlords, everybody.

Pullman, who has grown so rich from the toil of his workingmen, that he can riot in luxury, while he heartlessly turns these very workmen out of their tenements into the streets and leave to the tender mercies of corporate greed.

To the workman we appeal by the memory and traditions of his own sufferings and wrongs to be vigilant to avoid the great guilt of inflicting upon his fellow-citizens the injustice from which he has himself escaped.

If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated ...

But there are too many people that make so much money at the cost of lives of other humans and for no reason but to make the money.

During those twelve hour nights we’d chat about the motormen, conductors, guards etc. whose conditions were even worse. They had to work a ‘spread’ of 16 hours each day in order to get 10 hours pay. Negro workers could get jobs only as porters. They were subjected to treatment that makes Little Rock and Birmingham seem liberal and respectable by comparison … I also saw Catholic ticket agents fired by Catholic bosses for going to mass early in the morning while the porter ‘covered’ the booth for half an hour. Protestant bosses fired Protestant workers for similar crimes — going to church. The Jewish workers had no trouble with the subway bosses — Jews were denied employment in the transit lines.

Leaders of the business community ... have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in this country - a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old. .

It is assumed that the daughters of the poor are for the use of the rich. They assume that we’re their property.

In truth, also, however the matter may be disguised, the combinations among workmen to obtain higher wages, which are now so general and so much complained of, are practical attacks on the claims of capital…. On the side of the labourers there is physical strength, for they are more numerous than their opponents. They are also fast losing that reverence for their opponents which was and is the source of their power, and they are daily acquiring a moral strength which results from a common interest and a close and intimate union …

The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not care for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns

The world no longer permits the stronger to kill the weaker, but it allows the wealthy to oppress the poor. Money is holier than man. Human life is less sacred than property. To save a dollar is regarded as a more necessary virtue than to save a human heart. Society cares more for fortune than for truth.

I’ll stop demonizing business when business stops putting their profits before the country and starts putting their workers before their greed.

Workers cannot buy with their salaries what they have produced and at the same time copiously nourish the swarm of idlers who live upon their work.

Who is looking out for the working class? The answer is, Nobody!

Disproportionate corporate power over governments is giving license to the greed that denies workers even minimum living wages. It is also seemingly a license to allow the sheer brutality of treatment of working people at the base of the supply chains.

Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we're tired of hearing promises that we know they'll never keep.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

Actors were exploited no less by the capitalist managers than they were by the state.

The origin of all revolutions and corruption, and the spur and source of all base morals are just two sayings: The First Saying: 'So long as I'm full, what is it to me if others die of hunger?' The Second Saying: 'You suffer hardship so that I can live in ease; you work so that I can eat.'

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.

Runners are the lowest of the low in film units. They're paid very, very minimal wages - probably below the national average. And runners are now being asked to drive actors about, as well as their runner duties. It's kind of the same as taking advantage of nurses - it's appalling.