Bruce > Bruce's Quotes

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#1

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches

tags: compassion, freedom, humanity, inequality, inspirational, kinship, radicalism, subversion

79 likes

#2

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs

121 likes

#3

“I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.”
― Eugene Debs, Writings of Eugene V. Debs

tags: anti-militarism, anti-nationalism, compassion, cosmopolitan, humanity, universal-love

263 likes

#4

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”
― Eugene Victor Debs

tags: authoritarianism, deception, exploitation, fundamentalism, nationalism, oppression, patriotism, religion, totalitarianism, tyranny

502 likes

#5

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”
― Eugene Debs

tags: aristocracy, capitalism, feudalism, inequality, justice, labor, poverty, wealth

521 likes

#6

“Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.”
― Eugene V. Debs

68 likes

#7

“I would not be a Moses to lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.”
― Eugene V Debs

tags: leaders, leadership

56 likes

#8

“As long as he owns your tools he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

60 likes

#9

“I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Eugene V. Debs Speaks

46 likes

#10

“A privately owned world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

52 likes

#11

“I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think.”
― Eugene V Debs

45 likes

#12

“If I were hungry and friendless today, I would rather take my chances with a saloon-keeper than with the average preacher.”
― Eugene V. Debs

tags: chances, help, needy, poor, poverty, preacher

44 likes

#13

“Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.”
― Eugene Debs

41 likes

#14

“To stir the masses, to appeal to their higher, better selves, to set them thinking for themselves, and to hold ever before them the ideal of mutual kindness and good will, based upon mutual interests, is to render real service to the cause of humanity.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

38 likes

#15

“The greedy, profit-seeking exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He can see a chance for an “opening”; he is cunning enough to know what graft is and where it is, and how it can be secured, but vision he has none-not the slightest. He knows nothing of the great throbbing world that spreads out in all directions. He has no capacity for literature; no appreciation of art; no soul for beauty. That is the penalty the parasites pay for the violation of the laws of life.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

44 likes

#16

“The people can have anything they want, the only problem is they do not want anything.”
― Eugene Victor Debs

22 likes

#17

“When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.”
― Eugene Debs

29 likes

#18

“. . . the press and the pulpit have in every age and every nation been on the side of the exploiting class and the ruling class.”
― Eugene V. Debs

tags: exploitation, press, pulpit

31 likes

#19

“I left that church with rich and royal hatred of the priest as a person, and a loathing for the church as an institution, and I vowed that I would never go inside a church again.

[Eugene V. Debs, describing his teenage reaction to a hellfire lecture by a priest]”
― Eugene V. Debs

tags: church, hatred, hell, hellfire, institution, loathing, priest

16 likes

#20

“Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.”
― Eugene V. Debs

tags: agitation, change, dissent, progress

24 likes

#21

“Privately owned industry and production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to work out to humane and civilized ends.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

21 likes

#22

“They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

26 likes

#23

“Beware of capitalism's politicians and preachers! They are the lineal descendants of the hypocrites of old who all down the ages have guarded the flock in the name of patriotism and religion and secured the choicest provender and the snuggest booths for themselves by turning the sheep over to the ravages of the wolves.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

20 likes

#24

“Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again.”
― Eugene V. Debs

15 likes

#25

“He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Works of Eugene Victor Debs

15 likes

#26

“The name of Robert G. Ingersoll is in the pantheon of the world. More than any other man who ever lived he destroyed religious superstition. He was the Shakespeare of oratory -- the greatest that the world has ever known. Ingersoll lived and died far in advance of his time. He wrought nobly for the transformation of this world into a habitable globe; and long after the last echo of destruction has been silenced, his name will be loved and honored, and his fame will shine resplendent, for his immortality is fixed and glorious.

{Debbs had this much respect for Ingersoll, despite their radically different political views. This statement was made at Ingersoll's funeral}”
― Eugene Victor Debs

tags: admiration, greatness, honor, ingersoll, inspirational, legendary, love, oratory, pantheon, praise, religious-superstition, respect, robert-g-ingersoll, robert-green-ingersoll, robert-ingersoll, shakespeare, superstition, william-shakespeare

14 likes

#27

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

323 likes

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