Joe Hill (activist)

“Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights.All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites.Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave?Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?”

“I die with a clear conscience, I die fighting, not like a coward.”

“Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize.”

“My will is easy to decide,For there is nothing to divide.My kin don't need to fuss and moan —"Moss does not cling to a rolling stone."My body? — Oh! — If I could choose,I would to ashes it reduce,And let the merry breezes blowMy dust to where some flowers grow.Perhaps some fading flower thenWould come to life and bloom again.This is my last and final will.Good luck to all of you. [Joe Hill]”

“I'll take the shooting. I'm used to that. I've been shot a few times in the past, and I guess I can stand it, again.”

“A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.”

“There is pow'r, there is pow'rIn a band of workingmen.When they stand hand in hand,That's a pow'r, that's a pow'rThat must rule in every land —One Industrial Union Grand.”