Quote 1

“While the Law of Competition may be hard for the individual, it is best for the race. It insures the survival of the fittest.”

Topic: Social Darwinism

Andrew Carnegie

Quote 2

“For nearly 20 years crimes have been committed and permitted by this Christian nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 to 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed, and absolutely powerless. Statistics show that nearly 100,000 American citizens have been lynched in the past 20 years. To our appeals for justice the stereotyped reply has been the government could not interfere in a state matter.”

Topic: Lynching

Ida Tarbell

Quote 3

“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor a crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

Topic: The Gold Standard

William Jennings Bryan

Quote 4

“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress should be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”

Topic: Racial Equality

Booker T. Washington

Quote 5

“Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to be free.”

Topic: The New Immigrant

Emma Lazarus

Quote 6

“When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not go the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing.”

Topic: The Square Deal

Teddy Roosevelt

Quote 7

“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

Topic: The Meat Inspection Act

Upton Sinclair

Quote 8

“The problem of the 20th Century is the problem of the color line.”

Topic: Racial Equality

W.E.B. Dubois

Quote 9

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The wind will blow their own freshness into you… while care will drop off like autumn leaves.”

Topic: Conservation

John Muir

Quote 10

“An unscrupulous contractor regards no basement as too dark, no stable loft too foul, no rear shanty too provisional, no tenement room too small for his workroom as these conditions imply low rental.”

Topic: Settlement Houses

Jane Addams

Quote 11

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.”

Topic: Women’s Suffrage

Susan B. Anthony

Quote 12

“Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.”

Topic: Social Inequality

Eugene V. Debs

Quote 13

“The very fact that women now form about one-fifth of the employees in manufacture and commerce in this country has opened a vast field of industrial legislation directly affecting women as wage-earners.”

Topic: Women’s Labor

Florence Kelley

Quote 14

“the saloon was “the sum of all villainies” and the parent of crimes and the mother of sin. ”

Topic: Temperance Movement

Billy Sunday

Quote 15

“I felt invincible. My strength was that of a giant. God was certainly standing by me. I smashed five saloons with rocks before I ever took a hatchet . ”

Topic: Temperance Movement

Carry Nation

Quote 16

“The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserveso long as they hope to live as free men."

Topic: Free Speech

Robert La Follete

Quote 17

“There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed ."

Topic: New Freedom

Woodrow Wilson

Quote 18

“I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”

Topic: Political Corruption

William “Boss” Tweed

Quote 19

“The slum is the measure of civilization."

Topic: Urban Poverty

Jacob Riis

Quote 20

“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”

Topic: Labor Movement

Samuel Gomper

Quote 21

“A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness.”

Topic: Social Gospel

William Graham Sumner