It was the spirit of the workers that was dangerous. The tired, gray crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills had waked and opened their mouths to sing.

I had never before seen my friends come in beaten, their heads laid open, their noses broken, or seen them jailed for peaceably demonstrating that they wanted work. I had only known how workers lived. Now I was face to face with what our society did to workers who could get no work.

All the laws made for the betterment of workers' lives have their origin with the workers. Hours are shortened,wages go up, conditions are better----only if the workers protest

What if all the forces of society were bent upon developing [poor] children? What if society's business were making people insteadof profits? How much of their creative beauty of spirit would remain unquenched through the years? How much of this responsiveness would follow them through life?

... no one knows anything about a strike until he has seen it break down into its component parts of human beings.

In the last analysis civilization itself is measured by the way in which children will live and what chance they will have in the world

When a new idea assaults the power of established authority, authority always screams out that morality has been affronted. It makes no difference if this idea is that the world is round or that women should vote or that the workers should control industry.

We can always find noble reasons for what we want to do.

any peace movement must have behind it a higher passion than the desire for war.

We all marry strangers. All men are strangers to all women.