Mary Harris Jones Quotes

I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.

Not all the coal that is dug warms the world.

I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag.

I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people.

I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false.

What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union.

And who is responsible for this appalling child slavery? Everyone.

I would fight God Almighty Himself if He didn't play square with me.

Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword.

What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow.

In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little children from whom all song is gone?

[Women need to realize that with] what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike.

Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

I have always advised men to read.

Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures; that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men.

I am Mother Jones. The Government can't take my life and you can't take my arm, but you can take my suitcase.

You must stand for free speech in the streets.

A lady is the last thing on earth I want to be. Capitalists sidetrack the women into clubs and make ladies of them.

My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.

The strike of the miners in Arizona was one of the most remarkable strikes in the history of the American labor movement. Its peaceful character, its successful outcome, were due to that most remarkable character, Governor Hunt.

I will tell the truth wherever I please.

I'm not afraid of the press or the Militia.