Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busybodies and professional "public morals experts" in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
Interpretation
Helping others is valuable, but undermining their self-initiative can have harmful consequences.
This quote emphasizes the importance of individual initiative and self-reliance in promoting the welfare of workers. Samuel Gompers warns against well-intentioned actions that may inadvertently diminish a person's ability to help themselves, arguing that such actions can lead to detrimental outcomes for society as a whole. The quote critiques interventions that, despite being labeled as philanthropy or social good, ultimately hinder personal responsibility and autonomy.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about empowerment in the workplace.
There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.
Time is the most valuable thing on earth: time to think, time to act, time to extend our fraternal relations, time to become better men, time to become better women, time to become better and more independent citizens.
One fact stands out in bold relief in the history of man's attempts for betterment. That is that when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused, and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to man's reason can a movement succeed.
There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.
Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
It just is nothing foreign to consciousness at all that could present itself to consciousness through the mediation of phenomena different from the liking itself; to like is intrinsically to be conscious.
Where belief is painful we are slow to believe.
We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.
Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Morality must keep up with technology because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they'll choose life everytime.
Everything is autobiography, even if one writes something that is totally objective. The fact that it's a subject that seizes you makes it autobiographical.
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