Strikes Quotes

“The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I were pregnant with a rock.”
― Katharine Graham

“They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.”
― Émile Zola, Germinal

“Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most — you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It’s possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someone — but losing your identity in the process. Because what happens when tragedy strikes? You’re left an empty shell. You’re left with nothing. ”
― Rachel Van Dyken, Toxic

“If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered.”
― Grover Cleveland

“But the workingpeople, the common people, they won't allow it.' 'It's the common people who get most fun out of the torture and execution of great men.... If it's not going too far back I'd like to know who it was demanded the execution of our friend Jesus H. Christ.”
― John Dos Passos, The Big Money

“Strikers in this country never won broad public support, for the public merely wanted all the conveniences of modern life without the guilt of knowing how those conveniences were procured.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“The sit-down strikers began to worry about the illegality of their action and the why and wherefore, and it was then the chief of all C.I.O. organizers, Lewis, gave them their rationale. He thundered, 'The right to a man's job transcends the right of private property! The C.I.O. stands squarely behind these sit-downs!' The sit-down strikers at GM cheered.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“All together, these powers and abilities combine to face an enemy that depends on you believing that it cannot be defeated. But we know that it can. Every person in this crowd is dedicated to stories about overcoming impossible odds and telling people that, in the depths of despair, there is always hope. And no matter what you are facing, when you face it together, you are unstoppable.”
― Brennan Lee Mulligan

“Bah! Do you think the poor people of the barrio pay for the upkeep of the Church? No! Wealth flows from wealth! And sources of wealth need stability to exist! And the Church provides stability! We teach the poor how to bear their burden; they are promised the kingdom of heaven, which is far more important than the little gains your strike would make …”
― Rudolfo Anaya, Heart of Aztlan

“The chief signifi cance of the comprehensive systems of unemployment compensation that have been adopted in all Western countries, however, is that they operate in a labor market dominated by the coercive action of unions and that they have been designed under strong union influence with the aim of assisting the unions in their wage policies. A system in which a worker is regarded as unable to fi nd employment and therefore is entitled to benefit because the workers in the fi rm or industry in which he seeks employment are on strike necessarily becomes a major support of union wage pressure. Such a system, which relieves the unions of the responsibility for the unemployment that their policies create and which places on the state the burden not merely of maintaining but of keeping content those who are kept out of jobs by them, can in the long run only make the employment problem more acute.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

“We were crushed’ said Judith; ‘for lack of resolution more than lack of numbers. A strike is nothing if a worker may pledge herself to it today and return to the factory
tomorrow. So we gather here; tonight, to unite and entwine our fate.”
― C.S. Malerich, The Factory Witches of Lowell

“The biggest blowback is when ur mind strikes with "But" and "If".”
― Deyth Banger, Brain on Porn

“It is in children that reality strikes the hardest. And yet, it is the children who weave the brightest dreams.”
― Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

“I'd live in the fields on hard corn for a just cause.
Yes, for a just cause I'd live in the fields
On hard corn.”
― Carl Sandburg, Selected Poems

“Christ, cut us up to little pieces. We'll die for what is right! Put fruit trees where our ashes are!”
― Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty

“it’s three strikes and you’re out of the union”
― J.S. Mason, The Ghost Therapist...And Other Grand Delights

“The Australian union movement called an 'illegal' general strike in 1976, when Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's government was trying to destroy our embryonic universal healthcare system. That strike brought the country to a standstill. Fraser backed down, and what became Medicare remains. The same people who disagree [with strike action] may also want to reflect on this the next time they enjoy a leisurely weekend, or are saved from an accident by workplace safety standards, or knock off work after an eight-hour shift. Union members won all these conditions in campaigns that were deemed 'illegal' industrial actiona at the time. These union members built the living standards we all enjoy. They should be celebrated and thanked for their bravery and sacrifices, not condemned and renounced.”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness

“The spectacle of that gathering [a NSW Teachers' Federation protest in the late 1980s], the might of its unified purpose, the feeling of solidarity and strength, resonated with me in a way that has shaped my beliefs and my actions ever since. Union power is this simple act of solidarity - of people realising what we have in common, and deciding both to stick together and to act.”
― Sally McManus

“Respect for the rule of law is about belief in the capacity of that law to dispense justice, fairness and equality for all. But laws aren't passed by principles - they're passed by governments, and governments can be unjust and unfair. Our anti-strike laws are one of many manifestations of this fact.”
― Sally McManus, On Fairness

“Called by the fattoria committee, the unemployed braccianti arrive in force on the lands that the owners refuse to improve. In spite of the presence of the owners, the superintendents, or their agents, the workers carry out the work; they then demand their salary (pay ble to the legal investment fund). In the backwards strike, the workers work against the wishes of the boss, and their work increases the productivity of the soil. This is doubly paradoxical when compared to the conventional notion of the strike. Thus, at Empoli, between Florence and Sienna, 70,000 cubic meters of grading, ditches, and other work has been carried out by the "strikers" under the direction of the fattorie committees. The latter paid the workers directly, withdrawing 4% from the money deposited by them into the bank and representing the sale of farm products. in all the areas of Tuscany where the committees are active, they have organized the planting of vines, the work of drainage or irrigation, the repair of buildings, and whatever else might be required. They even established, in individual locations, nascent production cooperatives for clearing the land and improving uncultivated or poorly cultivated soil, which assumes their presence on these lands notwithstanding the will of the owner.”
― Henri Lefebvre, On the Rural: Economy, Sociology, Geography

“With this bold stroke, they re-politicized International Women’s Day. Brushing aside the tacky baubles of depoliticization—brunches, mimosas, and Hallmark cards—the strikers have revived the day’s all-but-forgotten historical roots in working-class and socialist feminism.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto