“Can any one feel any respect for a government that accords rights only to the privileged classes, and none to the workers?”

— August Spies

Statement to the Court (1886)

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August Spies 4

American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper… 1855–1887

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“None are so interested in maintaining the institutions of the country as the working classes. The rich and the powerful will not find much difficulty under any circumstances in maintaining their rights, but the privileges of the people can only be defended and secured by popular institutions.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to a working men's club (1867), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 297.

“I know of no privileged class of society, and I do not know an esquire has any privileges a yeoman has not.”

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden (1762–1832) British barrister and judge, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench

Case of Edmonds and others (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 889.

“Class consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the phere of relationships between all the various classes and strata and the state and the government-the sphere of the interrelations between all the various classes.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter Three, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)

“If we all don't enjoy the same rights, then no one enjoys any rights at all; some of us merely enjoy privilege.”

Wendy Kaminer (1949) American lawyer

"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995)
Context: Not everything that appears true is true. The ACLU is devoted to some very controversial principles — like the principle that everyone who is arrested should enjoy the same constitutional rights, regardless of their alleged crime or their character. We don't take that position to irritate people; we take that position because we believe in it. We believe in it, in part, in a spirit of enlightened self-interest, because the rights of each one of us are co-extensive with the rights of everyone who is arrested and prosecuted in the criminal courts. If we all don't enjoy the same rights, then no one enjoys any rights at all; some of us merely enjoy privilege.

“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Not attribution to Jefferson earlier than William Jennings Bryan's Baltimore address of January 20, 1900
California Digital Newspaper Collection, Los Angeles Herald http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19000121.2.94.; appears in proximity to a reference to Jefferson in the 1878 "Notes of a Voyage to California Via Cape Horn", reprinting a 1850 Sacramento advertisment
via Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=Cis3Ni8wJkgC&pg=PA280 Samuel Curtis Upham, "Notes of a Voyage to California Via Cape Horn: Together with Scenes in El Dorado, in the Year 1849-'50, with an Appendix Containing Reminiscences: Together with the Articles of Association and Roll of Members of "The Associated Pioneers of the Territorial Days of California".. Earliest known variant is from the August 31, 1844 issue of "Niles' National Register", authored by the committee of William C. Bryant, George P. Barker, John W. Edmonds, David Dudley Field, Theodore Sedgwick, Thomas W. Tucker, and Isaac Townsend.
via Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=M1oUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA438.
Misattributed

“When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognises the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State

“We, the Great-Russian proletarians, who defend no privileges whatever, do not defend this privilege either. We are fighting on the ground of a definite state; we unite the workers of all nations living in this state; we cannot vouch for any particular path of national development, for we are marching to our class goal along all possible paths.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Right of Nations to Self-Determination", (1904), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

“What can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do, — they can see to it that they feel right.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks

“Can any one feel any respect for a government that accords rights only to the privileged classes, and none to the workers?”

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