Rose Pastor Stokes Quotes

Stand by Russia, Workers of America. Stand by your own cause. The issue is joined; the fight is on. Unite; use your power. For Russia--for ourselves--For Bread and Roses!

The battle between Science and Superstition is by no means over, but for Science it has been and continues to be a winning fight.

it is widely known — and discussed (although not in print) — that not among the least of those who have persecuted the poor law-breakers in this respect have rich law-breaking friends and do themselves break the law and benefit by the scientific knowledge they are instrumental in sending others to prison for disseminating.

From the day that the light of science began to break upon the mind of men, superstition has attempted to place a black curtain of fear between man’s mind and the light.

Industry, agriculture, yes. Bread, security, yes. But Roses, Roses, yes, a thousand times yes! Are we workers hungry for joy and beauty for art and culture? Today, Russia answers for us until the day when we shall answer for ourselves. The worker, starved through the centuries amidst the very plenty he created, is satisfying his hunger at last--in Russia.

For twenty-three years, Capitalist Society had done its worst to me. It gave me an underfed childhood, hemmed me in on all sides by the stone walls of No Opportunity, and, when I was hardly old enough to bear the burden, it began to turn my very heart’s blood into gold for others — sometimes for people I never saw and who never saw me. Whole seasons at a time worked me not only the long day but also far into the night, giving me in return semi-starvation, a starved body upon it, a few indecent rags, no schooling, frequently the hard floor for a bd, and the weight of an unnamable nightmare as each succeeding year added another moth to feed, then eliminated the father of those six little ones, in the unequal struggle for bread.

I see no hope of functioning 100 percent in the interest of the common people except through the Socialist Party, and hereby apply for readmission to membership. I left the party because I considered dangerous the party’s attitude toward America’s participation in the war; but the crisis created by the St. Louis resolution is past, and the present immediate danger is an imperialistic peace which, I believe, only a unified and strengthened international Socialist movement can prevent. I thrill to think how rapidly the world would move forward if, for instance, the German Social Democracy were to unite — if the party of the right were to unite with the party of the left — and sweep the Hohenzollerns out of power, or if the several parties of the Social Revolution in Russia were to sink their differences and go to the heart of their common purpose; or if in Italy, France, and England there were but one unified expression of the Socialist movement; and because my heart cries out to them, “Comrades, unite!” I am brought to a keen realization of my own remissness. If I see and deplore the results of disruption and desire unity for my Comrades abroad, I must surely strive for unity here, where 90 percent of the American people, whose hearts beat warm as any in the world for humanity, need to stand as unitedly against their own and the world’s anti-humanitarian 10 percent, as the 90 percent of any other country. President Wilson’s last message; the British and French government’s failure to meet fully and in a spirit of frankness the democratic implications of it; the imprisonment in Germany of 300 of her left wing Socialists; the counterrevolutionary attempts in Russia, where an unseen hand not Russia’s seems to be playing fast and loose — these four significant events are among the foremost impelling me to rejoin the Socialist Party. I beg, dear Comrades, that you admit me again to your ranks.

The masses, lovers of song, inspirers of all the great music that has ever been written--it is for them that the great artists of the Moscow Opera vie with one another to give their best.

Capitalist society has not succeeded in making me bitter, but it has succeeded in making me unafraid.

Don’t look at the one who has somehow chanced to survive but look down into the pit where the millions struggle weakly, and where millions have succumbed.

The thing that impresses the “impractical” radical most is not so much the cost in money as the cost in human life, the toll paid in human suffering, the agony millions of mothers endure when sickness or poverty or other unfavorable conditions (needlessly forced upon them by a maladjusted system) brings them a coffin and carries away the cradle, or — as frequently happens — leaving the cradle, leaves it with something more tragic than a coffin.

Frankly, then, I have broken the law over and over, because I believe that since science has shown the way, the mothers of the world should have the power and the right of control birth — to have as many or as few children as the conditions of their health or their particular material environment coupled with a decent standards of living, shall dictate.

When Russia deposed its czar we heard from a great deal of handclapping from the world but what did you hear when the real revolution took place? Not commendation at least. Russia is the threat against industrial serfdom and I have no doubt that there is a gentlemen’s agreement to bleed her to death and then, the capitalistic gentlemen, of, shall we say, any countries, sit around the green table and parcel Russia and the rest of the world into economic spheres, which our workers must slave to maintain.