“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

“I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser. ”
― Mary Harris Jones

“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“The first thing is to raise hell,” says I. “That’s always the first thing to do when you’re faced with an injustice and you feel powerless. That’s what I do in my fight for the working class.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“No matter what the fight, don't be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“I will tell the truth wherever I please.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“A lady is the last thing on earth I want to be. Capitalists sidetrack the women into clubs and make ladies of them.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“They began work at 5:30 and quit at 7 at night. Children six years old going home to lie on a straw pallet until time to resume work the next morning! I have seen the hair torn out of their heads by the machinery, their scalps torn off, and yet not a single tear was shed, while the poodle dogs were loved and caressed and carried to the seashore.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“No matter what the fight, don't be ladylike!”
― Mary Harris Jones

“I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!”
― Mary Harris Jones

“My teachers treated me as a diamond in the rough, someone who needed smoothing.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“[Women need to realize that with] what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.”
― Mary Harris Jones

“I preferred sewing to bossing little children.”
― Mary Harris Jones