Eugene V. Debs Quotes

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

This is a hard job to do …. We represent the underdog, and that makes the top dogs angry.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

I believe one half of the world is born for the convenience of the other half

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others.

Revolution applies a local anaesthetic to one class of society and operates on the other.

It is bad to have a servant, but worse to have a master.

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

Man has set man against man, Washed against unwashed.

The weak are always at war with the stronger; that is the source of eternal hatreds.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

An issue between a people and a class

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

In the beginning, all men were alike and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are two kinds of men, the master and the slave. But there are more of us than there are of you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in mankind belongs to us.

Ask of politicians the end for which laws were originally designed, and they will answer that the laws were designed as a protection for the poor and weak against the oppression of the rich and powerful. But surely no pretense can be so ridiculous

The poor man … will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they have improperly won… the most awful passions will be let loose.