Walter Reuther Quotes

There is no greater calling than to serve your brother. There is no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well.

We want an America in which every child has educational opportunity, an America in which every citizen has equal job opportunity, equal rights to the use of all public facilities, the right to live in a decent neighborhood, in a decent home.

Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the national pie. Labor is fighting for a larger pie.

We have to reassert the sovereignty of people above profits in America.

But in truth, America is the last, best hope of freedom. If we can't make freedom and democracy work in America, then it can't be made to work any place in the world.

I happen to believe that this is the crux of where we're going in terms of the future of the American economy. I think that the basic problem is to find a way to work out the competing equities among the three groups—the worker, the stockholder, and the consumer—so that we share the abundance in a way that would create the dynamics of growth and expansion.

We say to American industry, if you can afford to pay pension plans to people who don't need them, then by the eternal gods you are going to have to pay them to people who do need them.

This is our goal—a world of peace, freedom, and social justice for all people everywhere.

For centuries man has struggled to divide up economic scarcity. There was too little food for the hungry, too little clothing for the naked. Now for the first time in the history of mankind, we have within our grasp the economic tools of unprecedented abundance which can end man's ageless struggle against want and misery. The same scientific and technical know-how which brought forth the H-bomb and guided missiles gives to the world automation and the tools of economic abundance. Will mankind have the vision and common sense to use the new tools of abundance to usher in an era of human progress and human fulfillment?

We must learn to judge people, not by their color or race or creed, but rather by their worth as human beings.

One thing we must do, most of all, in the future, is to harness the atom for peace and get all of the miners out of the earth.

Americans of all religious faiths, of all political persuasions, and from every section of our Nation are deeply shocked and outraged at the tragic events in Selma Ala., and they look to the Federal Government as the only possible source to protect and guarantee the exercise of constitutional rights, which is being denied and destroyed by the Dallas County law enforcement agents and the Alabama State troops under the direction of Governor George Wallace. Under these circumstances, Mr President, I join in urging you to take immediate and appropriate steps including the use of Federal marshals and troops if necessary, so that the full exercise of constitutional rights including free assembly and free speech be fully protected. Sunday's spectacle of tear gas and night sticks whips and electric cattle prods used against defenseless citizens demonstrating to secure their constitutional right to register and vote as American citizens was an outrage against all decency. This shameful brutality by law enforcing agents makes a mockery of Americans’ concepts of justice and provides effective ammunition to Communist propaganda and our enemies around the world who would weaken and destroy us. Mr President, your prompt and decisive leadership in this crisis is imperative in demonstrating Americans’ fundamental allegiance to the constitutional rights of all citizens. Prompt and decisive action on your part will moreover discourage the apostles of hatred, bigotry, and violence, who would divide America. It will give great encouragement and added strength to the many Americans in the South who, like you and the vast majority of Americans, believe that every citizen has a moral and constitutional right to register and vote. I am confident that in this crisis, Mr President, you will act with the same conviction, courage, and compassion which has characterized your leadership and other periods of challenge.

I have been saying for a long time that I believe the more young Americans who are trained to join with other young people in the world to be sent abroad with slide rule, textbook, and medical kit to help people help themselves with the tools of peace, the fewer young people will need to be sent with guns and weapons of war.

You cannot save democracy in a vacuum of idealism. You have got to be motivated by idealism, but you have got to also be fighting the hard problem of practical politics.

Now this essentially is the difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party. Philosophically, the Republican party believes that if you help big business to earn higher profit, they will then invest more money in plants. That will create more job opportunities. That will create full employment. They've got this trickle-down theory that you can build prosperity from the top down. The Democrats basically believe that you've got to build prosperity from the bottom up by expanding purchasing power, by doing the things that will make it possible for all the American people to participate in prosperity.