Minimum Wage Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old minimum wage quotes, minimum wage sayings, and minimum wage proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Criticizing the minimum wage can lead to arguments high on emotionalism but low on reason and rationality. It is pure demagoguery to charge that questioning the minimum wage means one wants to see workers reduced to a starvation-level income. Reagan
We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books. Milton Friedman
There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer. Martin Luther King Jr.
But we hold with Lincoln that labor deserves higher consideration than capital. Therefore we hold that labor has a right to the means of life—that there must be a living wage. Theodore Roosevelt
Maybe you know my boss. He's the one who expects a maximum effort for a minimum wage. Robert Orben
That state is a state of slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him. Eric Gill
The worst crime against working people is a company that fails to operate at a profit. Samuel Gompers
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; / And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, / But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, / Shall draw the thing as he sees It for God of Things as they are. Rudyard Kipling
It's been a hard day's night / And I've been working like a dog. John Lennon and Paul McCartney
To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on Saturday night, Socialism does not mean much more than better wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you about. George Orwell
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair
Give a man a dole and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and pay him an assured wage and you save both body and spirit. Harry Lloyd Hopkins
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. Robert Frost
I've been working, working, working, and you know, sometimes you look back at your work and you see that it just isn't any good. Truman Capote
I don't know of a single economist who disagrees that when you raise the minimum wage, you kill jobs for the poor. Newt Gingrich
Raising the minimum wage does not take from growth, it adds to growth. Phil Murphy
When we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we're not talking about a couple of teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We're talking about providers and breadwinners. Working Americans with bills to pay and mouths to feed. Tom Perez
Raising the minimum wage represents a substantial financial burden for employers, particularly start-ups, early stage companies, and family-owned businesses. In response, business owners would be forced to either lay off workers or raise prices to offset the rise in labor costs. Fabrizio Moreira
A person's right to a job is as spacious as his boss' right to success in business. There is no right to a minimum wage, just as there is no right to success in self-employment. Rex Curry
To all you who believe we shouldn't have a minimum wage -- that the minimum amount you can be paid should be determined solely by your employer. We tried it once before: it was called SLAVERY. Quentin R. Bufogle
The liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie -- but only if she is paid the minimum wage. Irving Kristol
The minimum wage was due for an increase, but it was important that we offset its cost to small businesses. J.D. Hayworth
The first to come and the last to go, working for that minimum wage. Jackson Brown
The average family earning minimum wage spends 141 percent of their income struggling to meet basic needs - food, shelter, clothing. Sherrod Brown
The typical minimum wage earner is a provider and a breadwinner - most likely a woman - responsible for paying bills, running a household, and raising children. Thomas Perez
The minimum wage is not something that you want to stay on on a permanent basis. For example, if you have a minimum wage job, you don't stay there 20 or 30 years. You don't put your children through college working on minimum wage. John Raese
A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it. Bernie Sanders
If you raise the minimum wage, you're going to make people more expensive than a machine. Marco Rubio