I remember with strong feelings the families who joined our movement and paid dues long before there was any hope of winning contracts. Sometimes, fathers and mothers would take money out of their meager food budgets just because they believed that farm workers could and must build their own union. I remember thinking then that with spirit like that... we had to win. No force on earth could stop us.

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

What I do shows people what kind of person I am.

Across the San Joaquin Valley, across California, across the entire Southwest of the United States, wherever there are Mexican people, wherever there are farm workers, our movement is spreading like flames across a dry plain.

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.

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

There is no substitute for hard work, 23 or 24 hours a day. And there is no substitute for patience and acceptance.