Women Activists From The United States

"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."

"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."

"The miners lost because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win."

"I refer to the United States, the union of all the states. I ask then, if in union there is strength for our nation, would there not be for labor! What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union. What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow."

"I could have settled it in twenty-four hours… I would make the operators listen to the grievances of their workers. I would take the $650,000 spent for the militia during this strike and spend it on schools and playgrounds and libraries that West Virginia might have a more highly developed citizenry, physically and intellectually. You would then have fewer little children in the mines and factories; fewer later in jails and penitentiaries; fewer men and women submitting to conditions that are brutalizing and un-American."

"When I get to the otherside, I shall tell God Almighty about West Virginia!"

"And why were these things done? Because a group of men had demanded an eight hour day, a check weighman and the abolition of the scrip system that kept them in serfdom to the mighty coal barons. That was all. Just that miners had refused to labor under these conditions. Just because miners wanted a better chance for their children, more of the sunlight, more freedom. And for this they suffered one whole year and for this they died."

"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!"

"If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I would shout, 'Freedom for the working class!'"

"No matter what your fight, don't be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies."

"If you ever saw a policeman with a club in his hand, I want to ask you, did you ever see that policeman club a millionaire? But it is "Get out of here, damn you, go on to jail, damn you," if it is a working man."

"The old condition is passing away. The new dawn of another civilized nation is breaking into the lives of the human race."

"Look at this watch of mine. Two hands there, nice looking, but let me take the hands out and it will be no good. It would be useless to, and your two hands are like unto the hands of the watch. You are the tool that move the nation. The Salvation Army, the Y.M.C.A. we build their institutions, pay for them, feed the people and everything. We are going to change that. The page is turned. The world is a moving magnet; a new civilization is coming; the pendulum is swimming as it has never swung before. It behooves to do our duty."

"Get it straight, I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser."

"I don't care about political parties. I went down to the Greenback parties, to the Populist party, in fact I went through them all. I found some of the parties most powerful weapons, but money interest prostitutes them all. Nowhere have you elected a man in this last election that represents your interests. I do not care what political party you put in power because we are of the economical power. We have the power to do and we will do it! They are not going to fool us there. It was not the political party that gained the eight hour day for the railroad man."

"In her seventies (and I guess this was one of the reasons she was called Mother, because she was old enough to be the mother of almost everybody who was working), she was organizing miners in West Virginia, and then Colorado. She was so colorful and so dramatic, and she looked like a schoolteacher, wearing her bonnet over her white hair. She was a fiery speaker. She did very dramatic things, like bringing the children of striking miners in Pennsylvania on a march to New York, to Theodore Roosevelt's house, to demand an end to child labor. They were carrying signs saying WE WANT TIME TO PLAY…She was jailed many times. Nothing daunted her. She was brought into courts and she would defy the judge. She inspired miners and other workers all over the country."

"Mother Jones had a delightfully extensive profane vocabulary and did not hesitate to use it in conversation...Whenever Mother Jones came to New York she would let me know. She was moving toward the century mark, but she still had fire in her eye. For hours at a time I would talk with her in her room in the old Union Square Hotel. With a pail of beer on the table, she liked to tell me all about "my boys" (the miners), her experiences in jails, and what happened during strikes."

"Mother Jones came to Washington and told a Congressional committee about the terror in the West Virginia coal regions. I pictured her, and wrote that it was not easy to portray that "benign and yet so belligerent" face. When she was held captive by the West Virginia authorities she said to them: "You can stand me up against that wall and riddle me with bullets, but you can't make me surrender.""

"In these tours of the Ohio minefields I often met Mother Jones. Our paths had crossed many times before, especially in the early 1900's in the Pennsylvania mining fields, and we were good friends. Mother Jones became interested in the labor movement after the death of her husband, who had been a soldier in the Civil War. She herself was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1830. She was an instinctive fighter against the capitalist class and spent her time organizing the miners into the U.M.W.A...In later years Mother Jones came under the wrong influences, and was sometimes made use of to play a reactionary role. She always retained great prestige among the miners, who would do almost anything she asked. I can remember time after time when a caucus in the A. F. of L. prepared to make a demonstration of strength against Gompers, she would come in at the last moment and say, "Stick to your old Sammy, boys, stick to your old Sammy!" and they would vote for him again. But just the same Mother Jones was an historical figure, a fine woman and a fine courageous fighter. I met this remarkable woman many more times, since a great deal of my work in the Socialist Party was spent among the miners, and we often held meetings together. Mother Jones died in December, 1930, at the age of 100. The last major strike in which she participated was the great steel strike of 1919, but she was in touch with things and spoke at meetings until 1923, when she was in her nineties. After that she went to stay with a Socialist family who took care of her until the end."

"I do not love you the way I love Mother Jones"

"hailed in labor circles as "the miner's angel""

"If your judgement is clouded, you must be carrying too many things which are being a burden to you."

"every time Yoko Ono pays to have that full page in The New York Times — the “War is Over” page — I’m fascinated by that. I think, well, I’d love to hear her talk about why she continues to do this, because we so much wish it were true. We’d like to be able to say, “Yes, it’s true.” I actually kept that postcard that said “War is Over” in that same font on my wall for years, because I so much wanted to believe it. And yet, you look at the world, and it’s not true, and you think, is this just — is this manifest positive thinking?"

"I learned everything from her. … It is a teacher-pupil relationship. That's what people don't understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one, the one who's supposed to know everything, but she's my teacher. She's taught me everything I fucking know."

"Woman, please let me explainI never meant to cause you sorrow or painSo let me tell you again and again and again...I love youNow and forever."

"My biography now reads, "Born, lived and met Yoko.""

"That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot."

"The opposite of love is fear, not hate."

"Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world. Power works in mysterious ways. You don’t have to do much. Visualise the domino effect And just start thinking PEACE. The message will circulate faster than you think. It’s Time For Action. The Action is PEACE. Spread the word. Spread PEACE. I love you!"

"Remember, our hearts are one. Even when we are at war with each other, our hearts are always beating in unison."

"Don't ever give up on life. Life can be so beautiful, especially after you've spent a lot of time with it."

"I thank Pussy Riot for standing firmly in their belief for Freedom of Expression, and making all women of the world proud to be women."

"In a day, sometimes I feel so much love for the world, I think my heart is bursting. Sometimes, I feel so scared, I want to shrink myself even further. I think that’s what happened to us gods and goddesses. Like the dinosaurs, we realized that it’s too dangerous to be so large. So we kept shrinking ourselves to what we are now. We might get even smaller. I see the sign in the engineers making smaller gadgets, smaller and smaller. Pretty soon, our fingers will be too large to operate them. So what are we doing? I trust in the human wisdom. We are incredibly intelligent beings. So we might know something without thinking that we know…. Well, even my best friend didn’t know until now that I was thinking of crazy things like this."

"John and I felt that we were like people in an H. G. Wells story. Two people who are walking so fast that nobody else can see them."

"If Lennon were alive today, he probably would have reconciled with the man he accused of having "made a fool of everyone." John would have been the first one now, if he had been there, to recognise and acknowledge what Maharishi has done for the world and appreciate it."

"I’m not that concerned about professional politicians. I always believe that we can change the world by grass-roots movements. It is a very important thing to do. It is the first time that I realized that I respect America so much because there are so many Americans trying to shift the axis of the world to peace."

"I dedicate this light tower to John Lennon my love for you is forever yoko ono October 9th 2007"

"There is a saying that a glass is half empty or half full, depending on how you look at it. Well, we all know that one. But we cannot just say, okay so half full is how we should look at things. No. We have to go even further in our observation and realize that the glass is actually 100 percent full: 50 percent with water and 50 percent with air."

"Never say goodbye, You say tomorrow's another day, All I know is we're here today. I've got nightmares I could never share with you, The kind that keeps me up all night. So hold me tight till the room is light And tell me that it's all right."

"I gave you my life, you gave me my life. Like a gush of wind in my hair. Why do we forget what's been said And play the game of life with our hearts?"

"Walking on thin ice, I'm paying the price. I'm throwing the dice in the air. Why must we learn it the hard way And play the game of life with your heart?"

"I usually stay away from being carried away, But one day I saw a silver horse. I thought he might take me to that somewhere high, I thought he might take me to that deep blue sky. I came to realize that the horse had no wings. No wings, well, it wasn't so bad, you know. I learnt to travel the world around And run on the ground in the morning. And that's the story of a wandering soul, A story of a dreamer."

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality."

"You know, sometimes you can be blinded by your extreme emotions. I definitely was looking for answers, during that time when I wrote that song, and yeah, I was depressed and sad, and there were thoughts, but there were never actions, thankfully. But I wanted to share that side of my story, because I know there are so many other people out there that have gone through things like that, and you always feel like you're the only one going through that. You walk out the door, and you see someone you know, and they ask you how you are, and you just have to say you're fine when you're not really fine, but you just can't get into it because they would never understand. Well, then comes along a song that speaks to you, that makes you feel like "Gosh, I can get through this. If she can get through this, I can get through this"."

"So you wanna play with magic? Boy, you should know what you're falling for. Baby do you dare to do this? Cause I’m coming at you like a dark horse."

"If you wanna dance, if you want it all, You know that I'm the girl that you should call."

"You held me down, but I got up Already brushing off the dust. You hear my voice, you hear that sound, Like thunder, gonna shake the ground. You held me down, but I got up, Get ready cause I’ve had enough. I see it all, I see it now."

"Falling from cloud nine Crashing from the high I'm letting go tonight Yeah, I'm falling from cloud nine I'm wide awake."

"Saucer of milk Table for two You wanna pet my kitty? You're such a dirty doggie."

"Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock? Don't be a chicken boy Stop acting like a beotch Imma peace out if you don't give me the payoff."