Eugene V. Debs Quotes

I would not be a Moses to lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.

If I were hungry and friendless today, I would rather take my chances with a saloon-keeper than with the average preacher.

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.

Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that 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.

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

I left that church with rich and royal hatred of the priest as a person, and a loathing for the church as an institution, and I vowed that I would never go inside a church again.[Eugene V. Debs, describing his teenage reaction to a hellfire lecture by a priest]

The workers are the saviors of society the redeemers of the race.

I know that the Kaiser incarnates all there is of brute force and of murder. And yet I would not, if I had the power, kill the Kaiser. I would do to him what Thomas Paine wanted to do to the king of England. He said, "Destroy the king, but save the man.

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

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.

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.

Sooner or later every war of trade becomes a war of blood.

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.", June 16, 1918)

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the Pe

The American people can have anything they want the trouble is they don't know what they want.

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