25 Dolores Huerta Quotes For A Better Tomorrow

By Clifton Sankofa | Published August 22, 2023

Get inspired to help yourself and your community with our Dolores Huerta quotes.

Dolores Huerta has been inspiring the world for decades!

Find out what makes this passionate labor leader so successful with our Dolores Huerta quotes.

Who is Dolores Huerta?

Dolores Huerta is a prominent American labor leader and civil rights activist.

She has received many awards for her dedication to civil rights for immigrants and women.

Check out these Dolores Huerta facts below:

Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike of 1965.
She coined the famous phrase “Si, se puede” or “Yes, we can.”
She co-founded the United Farmworkers Association with Cesar Chavez.

What did Dolores Huerta do?

The better question is, what has Dolores Huerta not done?

Dolores Huerta is one of the twentieth century’s most well-known civil rights and labor activists.

In the 1950s, she organized the Community Service Organization, which fought for Latino, Mexican, and Chicano migrant farm workers.

She fought to make it possible for Spanish-speaking people to take the California driver’s exam in Spanish.

In the sixties, she devoted her time to setting up voter registration drives and pressed local governments to improve workers’ conditions.

Dolores Huerta and the Delano grape strike

The conditions farm workers have dealt with have always been atrocious.

Many farmers struggled to care for their families because they were overworked, underpaid, under-resourced, and without proper representation.

In 1965, Huerta organized the Delano grape strike and made the conditions of the workers known to the public.

When consumers discovered grape workers’ deplorable conditions, they stopped purchasing wine and grape juice.

The boycott was effective and resulted in the entire California grape industry making deals and signing collective bargaining agreements with the United Farm Workers.

Dolores Huerta changed policing

In 1988, Dolores Huerta was severely beaten by a San Francisco police officer.

The beating was filmed and released to the public.

Her ribs were broken, and her spleen was removed due to the beating.

She won a considerable judgment against the SFPD and donated all of the money to benefit farm workers.

However, more importantly, SFPD was forced to change its rules regarding crowd control.

To learn more about this legendary civil and human rights leader, check out our Dolores Huerta quotes below.

Short Dolores Huerta quotes about protest

Dolores Huerta is a true warrior of peace.

1. “Get off the sidewalk.” — Dolores Huerta

2. “Stop being vegetables.” — Dolores Huerta

3. “Don’t be a marshmallow.” — Dolores Huerta

4. “Work for Justice. Viva the boycott!” — Dolores Huerta

5. “Walk the street with us into history.” — Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta quotes and sayings about honoring farmwork and nonviolent protest

Check out these interesting short Dolores Huerta quotes.

6. “Every person is a potential activist.” — Dolores Huerta

7. “Honor the hands that harvest your crops.” — Dolores Huerta

8. “Every moment is an organizing opportunity.” — Dolores Huerta

9. “The thing about nonviolence is that it spreads.” — Dolores Huerta

10. “Every minute is a chance to change the world.” — Dolores Huerta

The top Dolores Huerta quotes about improving farming conditions

Dolores Huerta is passionate about creating humane conditions for all workers, especially farmers.

11. “It was really atrocious.” — Dolores Huerta

12. “The conditions were terrible.” — Dolores Huerta

13. “They didn’t have rest periods. People worked from sunup to sundown.” — Dolores Huerta

14. “They didn’t have toilets in the fields; they didn’t have cold drinking water.” — Dolores Huerta

15. “The farmworkers were only earning about 70 cents an hour at that time; 90 cents was the highest wage that they were earning.” — Dolores Huerta

The best Dolores Huerta quotes questioning work practices

Below, Dolores Huerta educates people about working conditions by asking critical thinking questions and making thought-provoking statements.

16. “Why is it that farmworkers feed the nation, but they can’t get food stamps?” — Dolores Huerta

17. “Farm workers are like a symbol, and it is good that people are paying attention.” — Dolores Huerta

18. “We need to keep ringing the bell, wake people up to get our democracy together.” — Dolores Huerta

19. “Why is it that the people who do the most sacred work in our nation are the most oppressed, the most exploited?” — Dolores Huerta

20. “Every single day we sit down to eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and at our table we have food that was planted, picked, or harvested by a farm worker.” — Dolores Huerta

Famous Delores Huerta quotes about activism

We shall close our list with these inspirational Dolores Huerta quotes.

21. “We just have to convince other people that they have power.” — Dolores Huerta

22. “I think the importance of doing activist work is to engage people and give them hope.” — Dolores Huerta

23. “Going door to door and talking to people, convincing them to vote, that’s what I call organizing 101.” — Dolores Huerta

24. “When you get people to participate in nonviolent action, whether it’s a fast, a march, a boycott, or a picket line, people hear you, people see you, people are learning from that action.” — Dolores Huerta

25. “I think we brought to the world, the United States anyway, the whole idea of boycotting as a nonviolent tactic. I think we showed the world that nonviolence can work to make social change.” — Dolores Huerta