84 Quotes by Eugene V. Debs

While there is a lower class I am in it. While there is a criminal element I am of it. While there is a soul in prison I am not free.

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.

. . . the press and the pulpit have in every age and every nation been on the side of the exploiting class and the ruling class.

The economic owning class is always the political ruling class.

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.

I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.

A man should take to himself no discomfort from an opinion expressed or implied by his adversary, but it is difficult, and oftentimes humiliating to attempt to justify the kindness of one’s friends.

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.