Dorothy Day Quotes

Lincoln sees slavery in some ways as a theft of labor. A slave is a laborer who is being denied the fruits of his labor.

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.

Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that's balls - evil. But obviously that's your livelihood.

Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume: the hellish cycle is complete.

I'm not interested in being commodified. I'm not into being sold. I'm not a slave.

We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.

History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.

Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

We think we have to work because the advertising industry has elevated wants into needs. The newspapers and the television batter us incessantly with the latest 'must-haves', whether that's shoes, videogames or patio heaters. As a result, mums think they 'have' to work at Tesco in order to buy expensive trainers.

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.

Once the working classes were in chains, now they're in chain restaurants.

Capitalism robs you and makes a wage slave of you. The law upholds and protects that robbery. The government fools you into believing that you are independent and free. In this way you are fooled and duped every day of your life.

The moral character of Jefferson was repulsive. Continually pulling about liberty, equality and the degrading curse of slavery, he brought his own children to the hammer, and made money of his debaucheries.

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

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

We're always serving something, even if we're not aware of it. We're usually serving capitalism.

The accumulation of great wealth is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it, the consequence of which is that the working people perish in old age and the employer abounds in affluence.

Wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized protected robbery.

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

You want the people to know, but you don't really want the things behind it. I have everything I ever wanted. I never wanted a big house. I never wanted a Ferrari. I mean, as I proceeded with the music, I started liking Ferraris...

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil.

The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately, will be treated as garbage. (A Defense of the Family Farm, 1986)