Top 64 Eugene V. Debs Quotes
#1. I would rather be arrested as a traitor than fight a war for Wall Street.
Eugene V. Debs
#2. 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
#3. When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
Eugene V. Debs
#4. We want a system in which the worker shall get what he produces and the capitalist shall produce what he gets.
Eugene V. Debs
#5. 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
#6. A privately owned world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand.
Eugene V. Debs
#7. Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation.
Eugene V. Debs
#8. In the very progress of society, the prison has in the very nature of things undergone some improvement, but there are vast stretches yet to be covered before the prison becomes, if it ever does, an institution for the reclamation and rehabilitation of erring and unfortunate men and women.
Eugene V. Debs
#9. The protection the government owes you and fails to provide, you are morally bound to provide for yourselves ...
Eugene V. Debs
#10. Capitalism needs and must have the prison to protect itself from the criminals it has created.
Eugene V. Debs
#11. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; 'Am I my brother's keeper?' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.
Eugene V. Debs
#12. The people can have anything they want, the only problem is they do not want anything.
Eugene V. Debs
#13. 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
#14. From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I am Bolshevik, and proud of it.
Eugene V. Debs
#15. 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
#16. 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.
(Canton, OH, Anti-War Speech, June 16, 1918)
Eugene V. Debs
#17. Some go to prison for stealing, and others for believing that a better system can be provided and maintained than one that makes it necessary for a man to steal in order to live.
Eugene V. Debs
#18. It is when you have done your work honestly, when you have contributed your share to the common fund that you begin to live.
Eugene V. Debs
#19. A man should take to himself no discomfort from an opinion expressed or implied by his adversary, but it is difficult, and oftentimes humiliating to attempt to justify the kindness of one's friends.
Eugene V. Debs
#20. I do not oppose the insane asylum - but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.
Eugene V. Debs
#21. Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.
Eugene V. Debs
#22. It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
Eugene V. Debs
#23. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.
Eugene V. Debs
#24. The prison, above all others, should be the most human of institutions.
Eugene V. Debs
#25. The American people can have anything they want; the trouble is, they don't know what they want.
Eugene V. Debs
#26. The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.
Eugene V. Debs
#27. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives.
Eugene V. Debs
#28. 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
#30. No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
Eugene V. Debs
#31. I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it.
Eugene V. Debs
#32. The guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.
Eugene V. Debs
#33. If the people would but analyze the human equation of a prison they might better account for the crimes that are visited upon them in cities, towns, and hamlets, ofttimes by men who graduated with an education and equipment for just that sort of retributive service from some penal institution.
Eugene V. Debs
#34. The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be ruthlessly supressed.
Eugene V. Debs
#35. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.
Eugene V. Debs
#36. You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.
Eugene V. Debs
#38. 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
#39. The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.
Eugene V. Debs
#40. I am guilty of believing that the human race can be humanized and enriched in every spiritual inference through the saner and more beneficent processes of peaceful persuasion applied to material problems rather than through wars, riots and bloodshed.
Eugene V. Debs
#41. I would no more teach children military training than teach them arson, robbery, or assassination.
Eugene V. Debs
#42. Only the very ignorant and foolish believe that a president who has surrounded himself with Wall Street darlings as cabinet ministers has any serious designs on the trusts.
Eugene V. Debs
#43. 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
#44. You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political party and strike and vote together, and the hour you do that, the world is yours.
Eugene V. Debs
#45. 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 V. Debs
#46. 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
#47. In all the history of organized labor, from the earliest times to the present day, no body of union workingmen ever served in a more humiliating and debasing role than that in which the railway unions appear at this very hour before the American people and the world.
Eugene V. Debs
#48. Anybody can be nobody, but it takes a man to be somebody.
Eugene V. Debs
#49. Riches are the savings of many in the hands of one.
Eugene V. Debs
#50. As long as this great army of workers is scattered among so many craft unions, it will be impossible for them to unite and act in harmony together. Craft unionism is the negation of solidarity. The more unions you have, the less unity.
Eugene V. Debs
#51. The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery.
Eugene V. Debs
#52. 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
#53. The general public knows practically nothing about the prison and appears to be little concerned about how it is managed and how prisoners are treated.
Eugene V. Debs
#54. The economic owning class is always the political ruling class.
Eugene V. Debs
#55. Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.
Eugene V. Debs
#56. What can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command.
Eugene V. Debs
#57. The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society - we are on the eve of universal change.
Eugene V. Debs
#58. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.
Eugene V. Debs
#59. A prison is a cross section of society in which every human strain is clearly revealed.
Eugene V. Debs
#60. 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
#61. The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.
Eugene V. Debs
#62. 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
#63. I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.
Eugene V. Debs
#64. I don't want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.
Eugene V. Debs
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
