Jimmy Hoffa

"Nobody in this country respects what's weak. You believe me! If you see a beggar on a corner, with his hat in his hand, nobody respects him. Dress the same man up, give him an air of dignity, and he can command respect. The same thing applies to this union."

"But because we are financially solid, because we do have an organization that is equipped to handle any situation that comes in front of us, we are successful in getting from the employers what our members want and need without strikes."

"I do to others what they do to me, only worse."

"In the ten years I was president of the Teamsters, I had raised the membership from eight hundred thousand to more than 2 million and made it the largest single labor union the world."

"When you run an organization like the Teamsters one man has to be the boss and run things."

"They all know I'm back, very much back, and that I will be the general president again come hell or high water."

"You almost had to live through it to really know the gut ripping misery of the depression during the early thirties which led to labor's bloodiest and most violent days."

"A slab of bread "buttered" with lard and, if you were lucky, seasoned with salt and pepper, was a luxury."

"Mob guys had muscle, and where in hell do you think employers got the tough guys when they wanted to break a strike?"

"We never had any silk sheets in our family..."

"I let him strain for a couple of seconds. Then like taking candy from a baby, I flipped his arm over and cracked his knuckles on the top of the table. It was strictly no contest and he knew it. But he had to try again. Same results."

"Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too."

"It has to be considered damned unusual that no other union was ever investigated."

"Sure, we loaned money to build hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. So what? Las Vegas borrowers were good customers."

"But to hear Kennedy when he was grandstanding in front of the McClellan Committee you might have thought I was making as much out of the pension fund as the Kennedys made out of selling whiskey."

"Hell, I'm not saying I'm an angel, but when it came to dirty tricks I couldn't hold a candle to the Irish Mafia."

"Our rooms were bugged, our phones were tapped, and our lawyer's rooms were broken into and their files stolen. We finally had to hire armed guards with pistols to be able to maintain our records. It was hard to believe we weren't in Russia."

"When you go to prison they forget it's your Constitution, too."

"I've said consistently that no employer ever really accepts a union. They tolerate the unions. The very minute they can get a pool of unemployment they'll challenge the unions and try to get back what they call managements prerogatives, meaning hire, fire, pay what you want."

"I'll be back."

"From 1955 until 1965 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as Elvis Presley. From 1965 until 1975 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as the Beatles."

"There are simply no public figures today who so challenge the elite business and government establishment and so champion the working class as Jimmy Hoffa did almost daily and with arrogance."

"At least one time in adulthood, on the other hand, Hoffa claimed just seven school grades."

"No more than one third of his working time, indeed, was spent in his office."

"More apparent to Teamster members than any moral lapses were the tangible gains that had been steadily realized under Hoffa since his advent to power."

"He's not just the most powerful man in labor," Robert Kennedy had said in the wake of Hoffa's announcement; "he's the most powerful man in the country, next to the President."