Trade Unions

(168 votes)   Protection is not a principle but an expedient.

Benjamin Disraeli
1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(149 votes)   People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Adam Smith
1723-1790, Scottish Economist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(148 votes)   No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down.

George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(139 votes)   The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(136 votes)   With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.

Clarence Darrow
1857-1938, American Lawyer

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(114 votes)   Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826, Third President of the USA

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(108 votes)   Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution.

Alexis De Tocqueville
1805-1859, French Social Philosopher

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(99 votes)   This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very rare consolations for being so impoverished which are given to those of us who don't sell anything to anybody.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine
1894-1961, French Author

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(93 votes)   Is there something in trade that desiccates and flattens out, that turns men into dried leaves at the age of forty? Certainly there is. It is not due to trade but to intensity of self-seeking, combined with narrowness of occupation. Business has destroyed the very knowledge in us of all other natural forces except business.

John Jay Chapman
1862-1933, American Author

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(92 votes)   We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website