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Lucy Parsons Quotes
1853–1942 United States
Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons (1851 – 7 March 1942) was a radical American labor organizer, anarchist, and orator. She was born in Virginia, likely as a slave, to parents of Native American, Black American and Mexican ancestry.
United States Activists Anarchists Authors Feminists Also known as: Lucy Gonzalez
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18 quotes
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.
The worker is a mere appendage to the capitalist factory. Machinery has eliminated him. Robert Burns said: “O God, that men should be so cheap, and bread should be so dear!”
Order can only exist where liberty prevails.
The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word "Liberty"; yet it is comprehensive enough to include all things else that are conducive to progress.
All who are at all familiar with history know that men will abuse power when they possess it.
The trusts will not allow you to vote them out of power because they are the power, as is shown by the interview given above.
Wage Slaves vs Corporations (1905)
The land and all it contains, without which labor cannot be exerted, belong to no one man, but to all alike.
Passivity while slavery is stealing over us is a crime.
Governments never lead; they follow progress.
Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less.
Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.
Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination.
The grandest works of the past were never performed for the sake of money. Who can measure the worth of a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo or Beethoven in dollars and cents?
Most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.
They call us Reds. I don't know that that is very bad. I do not believe that is a very bad name. We are pretty red. I tell you I am a real Red.
May Day Speech (1930)
Think clearly and act quickly, or you are lost. Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less.
What has ever been granted to the countless millions of workers of Earth without a fight? Czar Nicholas has discovered that he is not all Russia. Will he "let the voice of the people be heard"? Was it argument or force that changed Czar Nicholas's mind? Well, the Russia people have gotten thin edge of the wedge in; let them keep striking hard, they will split the throne after a while.
On Revolution in Russia and Chinese Use of the Boycott (1905)
Women are stripped to the skin in the presence of leering, white-skinned, black-hearted brutes and lashed into insensibility and strangled to death from the limbs of trees. A girl child of fifteen years was lynched recently by these brutal bullies. Where has justice fled? The eloquence of Wendell Phillips is silent now. John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave. But will his spirit lie there moldering, too? Brutes, inhuman monsters—you heartless brutes—you whom nature forms by molding you in it, deceive not yourselves by thinking that another John Brown will not arise.
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