Labor Rights Quotes

#1. American labor rights activist, on activities of the National Farm Workers Association Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but human practice may.

Frederick Douglass

#2. The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment.

Ralph Nader

#3. The disgraceful and shameful construction of walls, the increasing enforcement of security systems and increasing violation of human rights and labor rights will not protect the economy of the United States.

Tucker Carlson

#4. We're taking on Social Security as a property rights issue. We figure that every single American has an absolute property right interest in the fruits of his or her own labor. What I work for should be my property.

Malcolm Wallop

#5. He was leading those who risked their lives over that bridge in Selma, not Janice Joplin, Columbia University, or a labor union. It wasn't John Lennon that taught people about love and peaceful resistance - that job fell on the shoulders of a Jewish carpenter.

Glenn Beck

#6. Without global human rights, labor and environmental movements, companies would still be hiring 12-year-olds as a matter of course and poisoning our groundwater without batting an eyelid.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#7. We are men, and propose to live like men in this free land, without the contamination of slave labor, or die like men, if need be, in asserting the rights of our race, our country, and our families.

Denis Kearney

#8. I have pleaded (labor's) case, not in the quavering tones of a feeble mendicant asking alms, but in the thundering voice of the captain of a mighty host, demanding the rights to which free men are entitled.

John L. Lewis

#9. I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.

Abraham Lincoln

#10. Three year sof unconditional MFN have not lead to any subtantial improvement in human rights, trade and nuclear proliferation practice of the Chinese government. In addition to the trade barriers, China has marred our trade relationship wit prison labor or export and other unfair trade practices.

Nancy Pelosi

#11. He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights for them I other respects.

John Stuart Mill

#12. As labor creates the wealth of the country, we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights.

John Peter Altgeld

#13. Modern slavery - be it bonded labor, involuntary servitude, or sexual slavery - is a crime and cannot be tolerated in any culture, community, or country ... [It] is an affront to our values and our commitment to human rights.

Hillary Clinton

#14. No wonder prostitution is so rampant in China, I mused as I watched the four girls watch us: why stand on your feet all day for slave wages when you can get rich on your back?

Tom Carter

#15. The true natural rights of men, then, are equal justice, security of labor and property, the amenities of civilized institutions, and the benefits of orderly society.

Russell Kirk

#16. Through the years I have received my share of recognition for efforts in the fields of sports, the arts, the struggle for full citizenship for the Negro people, labor's rights and the fight for peace.

Paul Robeson

#17. I have very mixed feelings about Jesse Jackson. He's very good about labor, and human and civil rights issues, but not so good on cultural issues.

Jello Biafra

#18. It is the indispensable duty of those, who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who possess the obligations of Christianity, to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under.

Benjamin Banneker

#19. Amnesty International, which was opening its yearlong campaign to protect human rights defenders in Colombia in response to the country's horrifying record of attacks against human rights and labor activists and mostly the usual victims of state terror: the poor and defenseless.

Noam Chomsky

#20. In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining ... . We demand this fraud be stopped.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#21. What my Republican colleagues often don't understand is that labor is a human-rights issue. I have to remind them Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement brought down the Communist bloc.

Chris Smith

#22. While the men of the steel industry were going through blood and gas in defense of their rights and their homes and their families, elsewhere on the far-flung C.I.O. front the hosts of labor were advancing and intelligent and permanent progress was being made.

John L. Lewis

#23. Women ought to be fully guarded by law in all rights of property, labor, profession, etc.; but, roughly stated, the voting population ought to represent the fighting population.

John Boyle O'Reilly

#24. Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.

Ingrid Newkirk

#25. New Zealand's been pretty quiet on human rights issues, which we will be taking rather more interest in, and in international labor issues.

Helen Clark

#26. Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.

Theodore Roosevelt

#27. Labor law violations are alive and well in the USA.

Steven Magee

#28. The trade agreement itself does have labor and environmental protections, but we have to stand for human rights and we have to make sure that violence isn't being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights.

Barack Obama

#29. Every advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another-came with the support and leadership of American Labor.

Jimmy Carter

#30. If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Ayn Rand