Cesar Chavez Quotes

#1. The strike and the boycott, they have cost us much. What they have not paid us in wages, better working conditions, and new contracts, they have paid us in self-respect and human dignity.

Cesar Chavez

#2. Non-violence exacts a very high price from one who practices it. But once you are able to meet that demand then you can do most things.

Cesar Chavez

#3. To make a great dream come true, the first requirement is a great capacity to dream; the second is persistence.

Cesar Chavez

#4. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.

Cesar Chavez

#5. If we are full of hatred, we can't really do our work. Hatred saps all that strength and energy we need to plan.

Cesar Chavez

#6. When you sacrifice, you force others to sacrifice. It's an extremely powerful weapon.

Cesar Chavez

#7. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men!

Cesar Chavez

#8. The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.

Cesar Chavez

#9. Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak ... Non-violence is hard work.

Cesar Chavez

#10. Because we have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything - even our lives - in our struggle for justice.

Cesar Chavez

#11. We do not need to kill or destroy to win. We are a movement that builds and not destroys.

Cesar Chavez

#12. Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves - and be free.

Cesar Chavez

#13. True wealth is not measured in money or status or power. It is measured in the legacy we leave behind for those we love and those we inspire.

Cesar Chavez

#14. What is at stake is human dignity. If a man is not accorded respect he cannot respect himself and if he does not respect himself, he cannot demand it.

Cesar Chavez

#15. We know we cannot be kind to animals until we stop exploiting them
exploiting animals in the name of science, exploiting animals in the name of sport, exploiting animals in the name of fashion, and yes, exploiting animals in the name of food.

Cesar Chavez

#16. We need to help students and parents cherish and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity that nourishes and strengthens this community - and this nation.

Cesar Chavez

#17. We need, in a special way, to work twice as hard to help people understand that the animals are fellow creatures, that we must protect them and love them as we love ourselves.

Cesar Chavez

#18. When you have people together who believe in something very strongly - whether it's religion or politics or unions - things happen.

Cesar Chavez

#19. Nonviolence is really tough. You don't practice nonviolence at conferences; you practice it on picket-lines.

Cesar Chavez

#20. Since the Church is to be servant to the poor, it is our fault if that wealth is not channeled to help the poor in our world.

Cesar Chavez

#21. The thing that we have going for us is that people are willing to sacrifice themselves.

Cesar Chavez

#22. When a man or woman, young, or old, takes a place on the picket line for even a day or two, he will never be the same again.

Cesar Chavez

#23. Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.

Cesar Chavez

#24. Never, never is it possible to reach someone if you become angry or bitter only love and gentleness can do it. Maybe not this time but maybe the next or the hundredth time.

Cesar Chavez

#25. In non-violence the cause has to be just and clear as well as the means.

Cesar Chavez

#26. If you are interested in preventing animal suffering, the first thing you should give up is eggs and milk because the animals who produce those foods lead the most unhappy lives. You would do better to eat meat and stop eating eggs and dairy products.

Cesar Chavez

#27. Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures and in the environment.

Cesar Chavez

#28. There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.

Cesar Chavez

#29. We are tired of words, of betrayals, of indifference ... they years are gone when the farm worker said nothing an did nothing to help himself ... Now we have new faith. Through our strong will, our movement is changing these conditions ... We shall be heard.

Cesar Chavez

#30. There is no law for farm labor organizing, save the law of the jungle.

Cesar Chavez

#31. If they had $2.00 for food, they had to give $1.00 to the union. Otherwise, they would never get out of the trap of poverty. They would never have a union because they couldn't afford to sacrifice a little bit more on top of their misery.

Cesar Chavez

#32. The end of all knowledge should be service to others.

Cesar Chavez

#33. I think one of the great, great problems ... is confusing people to the point where they become immobile. In fact, the more things people can find out for themselves, the more vigor the organization is going to have.

Cesar Chavez

#34. Concentration is inspiration. You must be completely overtaken by your work and your subject. Only then do all your influences and experience come up to the surface.

Cesar Chavez

#35. Our lives are all that really belong to us, so it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are

Cesar Chavez

#36. Today, the growers are like a punch-drunk old boxer who doesn't know he's past his prime. The times are changing. The political and social environment has changed. The chickens are coming home to roost - and the time to account for past sins is approaching.

Cesar Chavez

#37. We're going to pray a lot and picket a lot.

Cesar Chavez

#38. It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.

Cesar Chavez

#39. We don't know how God chooses martyrs. We do know that they give us the most precious gift they possess - their very lives.

Cesar Chavez

#40. Our union represents a breaking away ... represents sharing a power, represent questioning, represents a new force ... however long it takes, we are geared for a struggle.

Cesar Chavez

#41. You know, if people are not pacifists, it's not their fault. It's because society puts them in that spot. You've got to change it. You don't just change a man - you've got to change his environment as you do it.

Cesar Chavez

#42. It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.

Cesar Chavez

#43. Violence just hurts those who are already hurt ... Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.

Cesar Chavez

#44. Non-violence has suffered its biggest defeat in the hands of people who most want to talk about it.

Cesar Chavez

#45. However important the struggle is and however much misery and poverty and degradation exist, we know that it cannot be more important than one human life.

Cesar Chavez

#46. History will judge societies and governments - and their institutions - not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless.

Cesar Chavez

#47. Being of service is not enough. You must become a servant of the people. When you do, you can demand their commitment in return.

Cesar Chavez

#48. If you're outraged at conditions, then you can't possibly be free or happy until you devote all your time to changing them and do nothing but that. But you can't change anything if you want to hold onto a good job, a good way of life and avoid sacrifice.

Cesar Chavez

#49. What we do know absolutely is that human lives are worth more than grapes and that innocent-looking grapes on the table may disguise poisonous residues hidden deep inside where washing cannot reach.

Cesar Chavez

#50. Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

Cesar Chavez

#51. We are certain God's will is that all men share in the good things this earth produces.

Cesar Chavez

#52. Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people.

Cesar Chavez

#53. We are convinced that non-violence is more powerful than violence. We are convinced that non-violence supports you if you have a just and moral cause ... If you use violence, you have to sell part of yourself for that violence. Then you are no longer a master of your own struggle.

Cesar Chavez

#54. Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.

Cesar Chavez

#55. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read.

Cesar Chavez

#56. In the no-nonsense school of adversity, which we did not choose for ourselves, we are learning how to operate a labor union.

Cesar Chavez

#57. It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.

Cesar Chavez

#58. We farm workers are closest to food production. We were the first to recognize the serious health hazards of agriculture pesticides to both consumers and ourselves.

Cesar Chavez

#59. We are organizers at heart. Most of us in the movement take great pride in being able to put things together.

Cesar Chavez

#60. Do not romanticize the poor ... We are all people, human beings subject to the same temptations and faults as all others. Our poverty damages our dignity.

Cesar Chavez

#61. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

Cesar Chavez

#62. Kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society.

Cesar Chavez

#63. Look at the John Birch Society. Look at Hitler. The reactionaries are always better organizers.

Cesar Chavez

#64. We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

Cesar Chavez

#65. Perhaps we can bring the day when children will learn from their earliest days that being fully man and fully woman means to give one's life to the liberation of the brother [and sister] who suffers. It is up to each one of us. It won't happen unless we decide to use our lives to show the way.

Cesar Chavez

#66. We shall strike. We shall organize boycotts. We shall demonstrate and have political campaigns. We shall pursue the revolution we have proposed. We are sons and daughters of the farm workers' revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking bread and justice.

Cesar Chavez

#67. If you give yourself totally to the nonviolence struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone.

Cesar Chavez

#68. The only ones who make things change are fanatics. If you're not a fanatic around here, you can't cut it.

Cesar Chavez

#69. I am an organizer, not a union leader. A good organizer has to work hard and long. There are no shortcuts. You just keep talking to people, working with them, sharing, exchanging and they come along.

Cesar Chavez

#70. The workers aren't going to stop struggling. They're going to struggle to have a union and they have the right to have it. The police repression and the grower indifference to the workers' demands for recognition cannot go unheard so we're going to keep on struggling until we get that recognition.

Cesar Chavez

#71. There is enough love and good will in our movement to give energy to our struggle and still have plenty left over to break down and change the climate of hate and fear around us.

Cesar Chavez

#72. When the man who feeds the world by toiling in the fields is himself deprived of the basic rights of feeding, sheltering, and caring for his own family, the whole community of man is sick.

Cesar Chavez

#73. In 1968, I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry, and unhappy like we do..

Cesar Chavez

#74. Money is not going to organize the disadvantaged, the powerless, or the poor. We need other weapons. That's why the War on Poverty is such a miserable failure. You put out a big pot of money and all you do is fight over it. Then you run out of money and you run out of troops.

Cesar Chavez

#75. Many have the idea that organizing people is very difficult, but it isn't. It becomes difficult only at the point where you begin to see other things that are easier. But if you are willing to give the time and make the sacrifice, it's not that difficult to organize.

Cesar Chavez

#76. I'm not going to ask for anything unless the workers want it. If they want it, they'll ask for it.

Cesar Chavez

#77. In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.

Cesar Chavez

#78. There are many reasons for why a man does what de does. To be himself he must be able to give it all. If a leader cannot give it all he cannot expect his people to give anything.

Cesar Chavez

#79. When any person suffers for someone in greater need, that person is a human.

Cesar Chavez

#80. Though many of the poor have come to see the affluent middle class as its enemy, that class actually stands between the poor and the real powers in this society - the administrative octopus with its head in Washington, the conglomerates, the military complex.

Cesar Chavez

#81. When poor people get involved in a long conflict, such as a strike or a civil rights drive, and the pressure increases each day, there is a deep need for spiritual advice. Without it, we see families crumble, leadership weaken, and hard workers grow tired.

Cesar Chavez

#82. Self dedication is a spiritual experience.

Cesar Chavez

#83. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice.

Cesar Chavez

#84. We are confident. We have ourselves. We know how to sacrifice. We know how to work. We know how to combat the forces that oppose us. But even more than that, we are true believers in the whole idea of justice. Justice is so much on our side, that that is going to see us through.

Cesar Chavez

#85. If you win non-violently, then you have a double victory, you have not only won your fight, but you remain free.

Cesar Chavez

#86. Through Gandhi and my own life experience, I have learned about nonviolence. I believe that human life is a very special gift from God, and that no one has a right to take that away in any cause, however just. I am convinced that nonviolence is more powerful than violence.

Cesar Chavez

#87. There is a great fear of our Union - a fear that I do not fully understand, but that I know is present ... What is it that causes some men to act so hastily and so cruelly? It cannot be that we are so powerful. Is it so much to ask that the poorest people of the land have a measure of justice?

Cesar Chavez

#88. Organizing is an educational process. The best educational process in the union is the picket line and the boycott. You learn about life.

Cesar Chavez

#89. The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.

Cesar Chavez

#90. When workers fall back on violence, they are lost. Oh, they might win some of their demands and might end a strike a little earlier, but they give up their imagination, their creativity, their will to work hard and to suffer for what they believe is right.

Cesar Chavez

#91. It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves.

Cesar Chavez

#92. I would not take one cup of coffee from a grower ... There's not a good one. I hate them. A few presents, a little talk, then the noose. That's how capitalism works.

Cesar Chavez

#93. Our struggle is not easy. Those who oppose our cause are rich and powerful and they have many allies in high places. We are poor. Our allies are few. But we have something the rich do not own. We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons.

Cesar Chavez

#94. The end of all knowledge must be the building up of character.

Cesar Chavez

#95. When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of men we are.

Cesar Chavez

#96. I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.

Cesar Chavez

#97. If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with him ... the people who give you their food give you their heart.

Cesar Chavez

#98. The basis for peace is respecting all creatures.

Cesar Chavez

#99. Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.

Cesar Chavez

#100. In this world it is possible to achieve great material wealth, to live an opulent life. But a life built upon those things alone leaves a shallow legacy. In the end, we will be judged by other standards.

Cesar Chavez