Quote

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones
Age: 100 †
Born: 1830
Born: May 1
Died: 1930
Died: November 30
Human Rights Activist
Politician
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Union Organizer
Corcaigh
Mother Jones
Mary Harris
United
Pairs
Railroads
States
Stealing
Theft
Would
Prison
Senator
Men
Shoes
Senators
Asked
Pair
Crime
Thieves
Thievery
Told
Stolen
Railroad
Happened
Prisoner
Organizer

More quotes by Mother Jones

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Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent.
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Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives
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God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
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But in Shimabukuro's hands, as he breaks out experimental jazz, lays down a steady blues train, or shreds on rock anthems, this little jumping flea becomes a melodic monster.
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I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.
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My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: We must be together our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.
Mother Jones
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I will tell the truth wherever I please.
Mother Jones
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Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands.
Mother Jones
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Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.
Mother Jones
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You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
Mother Jones
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Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men
Mother Jones
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Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living
Mother Jones
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In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?
Mother Jones
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Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads
Mother Jones
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I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag.
Mother Jones
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a TEN-YEAR-OLD lad in Indianapolis who was arrested for picking up coal along the side of railroad tracks is now in jail. If the boy had known enough to steal the whole railroad he would be heralded as a Napoleon of finance.
Mother Jones
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I believe that no man who holds a leader's position should ever accept favors from either side. He is then committed to show favors. A leader must stand alone.
Mother Jones
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All the average human being asks is something he can call a home a family that is fed and warm and now and then a little happiness once in a long while an extravagance.
Mother Jones
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I was born in revolution.
Mother Jones
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My teachers treated me as a diamond in the rough, someone who needed smoothing.
Mother Jones