You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.

Speaking of myself, I was made to realize long ago that the old trade union was utterly incompetent to deal successfully with the exploiting corporations in this struggle. I was made to see that in craft unionism the capitalist class have it within their power to keep the workers divided, to use one part of them to conquer and crush another part of them. Indeed, I was made to see that the old form of unionism separates the workers and keeps them helpless at the mercy of their masters.

We want a system in which the worker shall get what he produces and the capitalist shall produce what he gets.

It is when you have done your work honestly, when you have contributed your share to the common fund that you begin to live.

One glance proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these unions (railroad craft unions) are exceedingly useful to the corporations; and to the extent that they serve the economic and political purposes of the corporations, they are the foes – and not the friends – of the working class.

I would rather be arrested as a traitor than fight a war for Wall Street.

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.