Top 100 César Chávez Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.”

— César Chávez

52. “Never, never is it possible to reach someone if you become angry or bitter only love and gentleness can do it. Maybe not this time but maybe the next or the hundredth time.”

— César Chávez

53. “Through Gandhi and my own life experience, I have learned about nonviolence. I believe that human life is a very special gift from God, and that no one has a right to take that away in any cause, however just. I am convinced that nonviolence is more powerful than violence.”

— César Chávez

54. “The consumer boycott is the only open door in the dark corridor of nothingness down which farm workers have had to walk for many years. It is a gate of hope through which they expect to find the sunlight of a better life for themselves and their families.”

— César Chávez

55. “Today, the growers are like a punch-drunk old boxer who doesn’t know he’s past his prime. The times are changing. The political and social environment has changed. The chickens are coming home to roost – and the time to account for past sins is approaching.”

— César Chávez

56. “It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.”

— César Chávez

57. “It’s amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.”

— César Chávez

58. “We don’t know how God chooses martyrs. We do know that they give us the most precious gift they possess – their very lives.”

— César Chávez

59. “When any person suffers for someone in greater need, that person is a human.”

— César Chávez

60. “If we are full of hatred, we can’t really do our work. Hatred saps all that strength and energy we need to plan.”

— César Chávez

61. “When the man who feeds the world by toiling in the fields is himself deprived of the basic rights of feeding, sheltering, and caring for his own family, the whole community of man is sick.”

— César Chávez

62. “It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life.”

— César Chávez

63. “When a man or woman, young, or old, takes a place on the picket line for even a day or two, he will never be the same again.”

— César Chávez

64. “The strike and the boycott, they have cost us much. What they have not paid us in wages, better working conditions, and new contracts, they have paid us in self-respect and human dignity.”

— César Chávez

65. “Organizing is an educational process. The best educational process in the union is the picket line and the boycott. You learn about life.”

— César Chávez

66. “There are many reasons for why a man does what de does. To be himself he must be able to give it all. If a leader cannot give it all he cannot expect his people to give anything.”

— César Chávez

67. “Look at the John Birch Society. Look at Hitler. The reactionaries are always better organizers.”

— César Chávez

68. “If you give yourself totally to the nonviolence struggle for peace and justice you also find that people give you their hearts and you will never go hungry and never be alone.”

— César Chávez

69. “In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.”

— César Chávez

70. “In this world it is possible to achieve great material wealth, to live an opulent life. But a life built upon those things alone leaves a shallow legacy. In the end, we will be judged by other standards.”

— César Chávez

71. “There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.”

— César Chávez

72. “We are suffering. We have suffered. And we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause.”

— César Chávez

73. “There is enough love and good will in our movement to give energy to our struggle and still have plenty left over to break down and change the climate of hate and fear around us.”

— César Chávez

74. “I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.”

— César Chávez

75. “If you win non-violently, then you have a double victory, you have not only won your fight, but you remain free.”

— César Chávez

76. “We are confident. We have ourselves. We know how to sacrifice. We know how to work. We know how to combat the forces that oppose us. But even more than that, we are true believers in the whole idea of justice. Justice is so much on our side, that that is going to see us through.”

— César Chávez

77. “Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures and in the environment.”

— César Chávez

78. “When you have people together who believe in something very strongly – whether it’s religion or politics or unions – things happen.”

— César Chávez

79. “However important the struggle is and however much misery and poverty and degradation exist, we know that it cannot be more important than one human life.”

— César Chávez

80. “Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers.”

— César Chávez

81. “Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.”

— César Chávez

82. “When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of men we are.”

— César Chávez

83. “The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.”

— César Chávez

84. “We are certain God’s will is that all men share in the good things this earth produces.”

— César Chávez

85. “I’ve always maintained that it isn’t the form that’s going to make the difference. It isn’t the rule or the procedure or the ideology, but it’s human beings that will make it.”

— César Chávez

86. “We’ll organize workers in this movement as long as we’re willing to sacrifice. The moment we stop sacrificing, we stop organizing.”

— César Chávez

87. “We are organizers at heart. Most of us in the movement take great pride in being able to put things together.”

— César Chávez

88. “Concentration is inspiration. You must be completely overtaken by your work and your subject. Only then do all your influences and experience come up to the surface.”

— César Chávez

89. “Nonviolence is really tough. You don’t practice nonviolence at conferences; you practice it on picket-lines.”

— César Chávez

90. “We’re going to pray a lot and picket a lot.”

— César Chávez

91. “Non-violence exacts a very high price from one who practices it. But once you are able to meet that demand then you can do most things.”

— César Chávez

92. “When workers fall back on violence, they are lost. Oh, they might win some of their demands and might end a strike a little earlier, but they give up their imagination, their creativity, their will to work hard and to suffer for what they believe is right.”

— César Chávez

93. “There’s no reason to be non-violent. There’s no challenge unless you are living for people.”

— César Chávez

94. “If they had $2.00 for food, they had to give $1.00 to the union. Otherwise, they would never get out of the trap of poverty. They would never have a union because they couldn’t afford to sacrifice a little bit more on top of their misery.”

— César Chávez

95. “The thing that we have going for us is that people are willing to sacrifice themselves.”

— César Chávez

96. “Money is not going to organize the disadvantaged, the powerless, or the poor. We need other weapons. That’s why the War on Poverty is such a miserable failure. You put out a big pot of money and all you do is fight over it. Then you run out of money and you run out of troops.”

— César Chávez

97. “Non-violence has suffered its biggest defeat in the hands of people who most want to talk about it.”

— César Chávez

98. “You know, if people are not pacifists, it’s not their fault. It’s because society puts them in that spot. You’ve got to change it. You don’t just change a man – you’ve got to change his environment as you do it.”

— César Chávez

99. “Non violence means people in action. People have to understand that with non-violence goes a hell of a lot of organization.”

— César Chávez

100. “The only ones who make things change are fanatics. If you’re not a fanatic around here, you can’t cut it.”

— César Chávez