We'll organize workers in this movement as long as we're willing to sacrifice. The moment we stop sacrificing, we stop organizing.
Interpretation
Sacrifice is essential for progress in organizing workers' movements.
This quote by Cesar Chavez highlights the importance of sacrifice in organizing efforts aimed at improving the lives of workers. It suggests that true dedication to a cause requires individuals to be willing to give up certain comforts or securities for the greater good, and once that willingness diminishes, the movement's momentum is lost.
In practice
This quote can inspire labor unions during collective bargaining meetings.
I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.
I think one of the great, great problems...is confusing people to the point where they become immobile. In fact, the more things people can find out for themselves, the more vigor the organization is going to have.
In the final analysis it doesn't really matter what the political system is...We don't need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation.
There is enough love and good will in our movement to give energy to our struggle and still have plenty left over to break down and change the climate of hate and fear around us.
Our union represents a breaking away...represents sharing a power, represent questioning, represents a new force...however long it takes, we are geared for a struggle.
Every time we sit at a table at night or in the morning to enjoy the fruits and grain and vegetables from our good earth, remember that they come from the work of men and women and children who have been exploited for generations.
Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.
In so far as the government lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so that every poor man may have a home.
So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away, to the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong.
Culture does not make people - people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, we must make it our culture. [...] A feminist is a man or a woman who says, 'yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better.'
I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.
Flow in the living moment. β We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and youβll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.