Lucy Parsons Quotes

Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.

Anarchism has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, "Freedom." Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully." — Lucy Parsons

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.

Oh, working man! Oh, starved, outraged, and robbed laborer, how long will you lend attentive ear to the authors of your misery?

There is no power on earth so great as the power of intellect. It moves the world and it moves the earth.

It is the moving inspiration of our age, the only question worth struggling for: the question of how to lift humanity from poverty and despair.

we have made work disagreeable because we have allowed conditions to obtain which force us to continue to work after we are tired, or at something for which we have no taste, take no interest in and have no adaptability for. For this reason we lose pleasure in work and it becomes irksome to us;

Concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this power reduced to a science. Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.

I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era of labor will have arisen, when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation.

Every person who is rendering no good to humanity is useless, no matter how hard they work. Head work and hand work are equally hard and equally useful if rightly applied. All people, rich and poor, are working at something; perhaps one at useful labor, the other at useless labor. Nevertheless they are each and all using their energies at some occupation.