Child Labour Quotes:

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television.

- Lewis Thomas

source: "A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays".

topic: Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Fungi, Livestock, Child Labour

It's estimated that there may be two hundred and fifty million children in the world engaged in some form of exploitative child labour.

- Carol Bellamy

topic: Children, Two, Engagement, Child Labour

Feeding a child at school is such a simple thing - but it works miracles.

- Drew Barrymore

topic: Children, School, Simple, Child Labour, World Hunger

Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth and other social problems.

- Kailash Satyarthi

topic: Children, Growth, Population, Social Problems, Child Labour

Child labour is an issue of grave importance. It must become a top priority for all governments of the world. How can the world move into the twenty-first century with children still being exploited for their labour and denied their basic right to an education?

- Craig Kielburger

source: Craig Kielburger (2010). “Free The Children”, p.57, Greystone Books

topic: Children, Moving, Issues, Child Labour

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.

- Grace Abbott

topic: Children, Together, Disease, Child Labour, Child Labor

A lot of work still remains but I will see the end of child labor in my lifetime.

- Kailash Satyarthi

source: "Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi win Nobel Peace Prize". www.foxnews.com. October 10, 2014.

topic: Children, Lifetime, Child Labor, Child Labour, Slave Labor

In the 19th century, a lot of people were against outlawing child labour, because to do so would be against the very foundations of a free market economy: 'These children want to work, these people want to employ them... what is your problem? It's not as if anyone has kidnapped them...'

- Brian Eno

topic: Children, People, Would Be, Kidnapped, Child Labour

If we can't begin to agree on fundamentals, such as the elimination of the most abusive forms of child labor, then we really are not ready to march forward into the future.

- Alexis Herman

topic: Children, Fundamentals, March, Child Labour, Child Labor

Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.

- Ingrid Newkirk

topic: Children, Pain, Rights, Love Pain, Parental Love

We must ensure that while eliminating child labor in the export industry, we are also eliminating their labour from the informal sector, which is more invisible to public scrutiny - and thus leaves the children more open to abuse and exploitation.

- Carol Bellamy

topic: Children, Abuse, Invisible, Exploitation, Child Labour

New legislation has just been adopted by the International Labour Organization on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, such as bonded labour, prostitution and hazardous work.

- Carol Bellamy

topic: Children, Organization, Child Labor, Child Labour

...180 million kids are engaged in the worst forms of child labour. Put it all together and it is not only morally unacceptable, but politically dangerous.

- Juan Somavia

topic: Children, Kids, Together, Decent Work, Child Labour

After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it - removing that advantage for all firms.

- Barry Commoner

topic: Children, Economic, Child Labor, Social Policy, Child Labour

They (the novelists) became the voice of the citizen against the ubiquitous raison d'état, which reappeared endlessly to justify everything from unjust laws and the use of child labour to incompetent generalship and inhuman conditions on warships. The themes they popularized have gradually turned into the laws which, for all their flaws, have improved the state of man.

- John Ralston Saul

topic: Children, Men, Law, Warships, Child Labour

What made women's labour particularly attractive to the capitalists was not only its lower price but also the greater submissiveness of women. The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labour must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible. In the same manner the capitalists use child labour to depress women's wages and the work of machines to depress all human labour.

- Clara Zetkin

topic: Depressing, Children, Two, Child Labour

Nearly one billion women and men, a third of the world's workforce, are either unemployed or unable to earn enough to keep themselves out of extreme poverty. There are 100 million new entrants into the labour market each year. Up to 90 percent in some regions are in the informal economy. 180 million kids are engaged in the worst forms of child labour. Put it all together and it is not only morally unacceptable, but politically dangerous

- Juan Somavia

topic: Children, Kids, Men, Workforce, Decent Work