If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.
Eugene V. DebsThe guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day.
Eugene V. DebsA prison is a cross section of society in which every human strain is clearly revealed.
Eugene V. DebsEvery one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.
Eugene V. DebsI am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.
Eugene V. Debs