Jimmy Hoffa Quotes

More apparent to Teamster members than any moral lapses were the tangible gains that had been steadily realized under Hoffa since his advent to power.

I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them.

Mob guys had muscle, and where in hell do you think employers got the tough guys when they wanted to break a strike?

In the old days all you needed was a handshake. Nowadays you need forty lawyers.

But to hear Kennedy when he was grandstanding in front of the McClellan Committee you might have thought I was making as much out of the pension fund as the Kennedys made out of selling whiskey.

When you go to prison they forget it's your Constitution, too.

I don't need a bodyguard.

In the ten years I was president of the Teamsters, I had raised the membership from eight hundred thousand to more than 2 million and made it the largest single labor union the world.

To the best of my recollection, I must recall on my memory, I cannot remember

It has to be considered damned unusual that no other union was ever investigated.

You almost had to live through it to really know the gut ripping misery of the depression during the early thirties which led to labor's bloodiest and most violent days.

I do to others what they do to me, only worse.

But because we are financially solid, because we do have an organization that is equipped to handle any situation that comes in front of us, we are successful in getting from the employers what are members want and need without strikes.

Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but man, did they get a break on the labor.

I've said consistently that no employer ever really accepts a union. They tolerate the unions. The very minute they can get a pool of unemployment they'll challenge the unions and try to get back what they call managements prerogatives, meaning hire, fire, pay what you want.

We never had any silk sheets in our family ...

From 1955 until 1965 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as Elvis Presley. From 1965 until 1975 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as the Beatles.

Run from a knife and rush a gun.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.