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
Men
Shoes
Senators
Asked
Pair
Crime
Thieves
Thievery
Told
Stolen
Railroad
Happened
Prisoner
Organizer
United
Pairs
Railroads
States
Stealing
Theft
Would
Prison
Senator

More quotes by 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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You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand
Mother Jones
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I was born in revolution.
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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Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.
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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You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
Mother Jones
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I'm not afraid of the press or the Militia.
Mother Jones
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My teachers treated me as a diamond in the rough, someone who needed smoothing.
Mother Jones
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Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent.
Mother Jones
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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.
Mother Jones
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I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false.
Mother Jones
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I will tell the truth wherever I please.
Mother Jones
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Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives
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'm not a humanitarian, I'ma hell-raiser.
Mother Jones
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I know that there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery
Mother Jones
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The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.
Mother Jones
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Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living
Mother Jones
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I preferred sewing to bossing little children.
Mother Jones