Debs is greater than Lincoln. Debs is the spokesman of the great struggling working class of all races, nationalities, creeds, sexes.
We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions... Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.
Lincoln was the spokesman of the rising capitalist class of the North, who viewed the emancipation of Negro slaves as indispensable to the development and triumph of the manufacturers and bankers of the industrial North, East and West over the slave-holder of the South.
I am prepared to oppose a Jim Crow army till I rot in jail.
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.
I don't ever remember a single day of hopelessness. I knew from the history of the labor movement, especially of the black people, that it was an undertaking of great trial. That, live or die, I had to stick with it, and we had to win.
