Mary Harris Jones quotes

Mary Harris Jones was an Irish-American labor and community organizer, famously known as "Mother Jones." She dedicated her life to fighting for workers' rights and improving labor conditions in the United States. She became a powerful symbol of resilience and advocacy for the working class. Here are 49 of her quotes:

I'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser. (Mary Harris Jones)
The miners lost because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I would shout, 'Freedom for the working class! View quote
Mary Harris Jones
No matter what your fight, don't be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
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. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Christ himself would agitate against them. He would agitate against the plutocrats and hypocrites who tell workers to go down on their knees and get right with God. Christ, the carpenter's son, would tell them to stand up on their feet and fight for righteousness and justice on earth. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
I do not believe that iron bars and brutal treatment have ever been cures for crime. And certainly I feel that in our great enlightened country, there is no reason for going back to middle ages and their form of torture for the criminal. (Mary Harris Jones)
I knew it was useless to tell the governor about conditions as I found them. I knew he would be neither interested nor would he care. It wasn't election time. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
The old condition is passing away. The new dawn of another civilized nation is breaking into the lives of the human race. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Organized labor should organize its women along industrial lines. Politics is only the servant of industry. The plutocrats have organized their women. They keep them busy with suffrage and prohibition and charity. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
When I get to the otherside, I shall tell God Almighty about West Virginia! View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living! View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Your organization is not a praying institution. It's a fighting institution. It's an educational institution along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living! View quote
Mary Harris Jones
God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Not all the coal that is dug warms the world. (Mary Harris Jones)
And who is responsible for this appalling child slavery? Everyone. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
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? View quote
Mary Harris Jones
Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. View quote
Mary Harris Jones