Noam Chomsky Quotes

I am a proud trade unionist.

I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

Labor cannot on any terms surrender the right to strike.

If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop.

I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence.

I think you'll see if you look at 'Up', we've focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise.

The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

The trade union, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty.

The toilers have awakened to the new found power of organized effort.

The methods by which a trade union can alone act are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.

We back Solidarity [the Polish trade union], and bust our unions.

The number of men out on strike exceeds that of any other industrial contest in the history of our country.

The history of all countries shows that, by its own efforts, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness—that is, the realization of the need of getting together in unions in order to fight employers and to demand from the government the passing of laws necessary for the workers.

Power? Nine workers out of ten still unorganized, and union dues going to bribe middle class politicians. You call that power?

No better strike leader than John N. Mitchell has ever emerged in any time of industrial strife.

In my experience, union leaders are respected by their members.

The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.

We'll organize workers in this movement as long as we're willing to sacrifice. The moment we stop sacrificing, we stop organizing.

The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.

The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

I was an organizer in the Food, Agricultural and Tobacco Workers Union down in North Carolina.

I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.

The dissolution of the trade unions was in the air then.