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Who really said it

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community

Attributed to Cesar Chavez 1927–1993 · American labor leader, co-founder of the United Farm Workers
Attributed In copyright

The United Farm Workers — the union Chavez co-founded — publishes this as his words, and President Obama quoted it in an official 2012 proclamation. But no speech, letter, or interview containing it has ever been produced, and the address it is usually credited to, the Commonwealth Club speech of 9 November 1984, demonstrably does not contain it.

Last verified 15 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community” attributed to Cesar Chavez. Published by the United Farm Workers as his words, but no primary source has been located, and it is not from the 1984 Commonwealth Club address it is usually credited to. Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Cesar E. Chavez Foundation). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Cesar Chavez — American labor leader & co-founder of the United Farm Workers. Theme: "We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the quote actually lives

Attributed to
Cesar Chavez (1927–1993)
Published in
Education of the Heart: Cesar Chavez in his own words
Publisher
United Farm Workers (ufw.org), undated quote compilation
Original speech or text
Not identified — no date, venue, or transcript located

Community

“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community…Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”

“When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So, it how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are.” Spliced with an ellipsis

This is how the quote appears on the UFW's own page — grouped under the heading “Community,” sandwiched between unrelated remarks, with no date or source attached to any of them. Note the ellipsis in the middle: it is the UFW's own, and it marks a splice between two separate statements. There is no fuller original context to show, because no original has been found.

UFW: Education of the Heart — Cesar Chavez in his own words

How we verified this

In copyright

Chavez lived 1927–1993, so any words of his fall well after the 1931 public-domain cutoff, and the UFW page carrying this quote states plainly ↗ that “The Cesar E. Chavez Foundation is the intellectual property owner of Cesar’s name, voice, image, and likeness, speeches and writings,” directing anyone reproducing them to seek permission. The specific source work has never been identified, so its exact publication date is unknown — but nothing about this line puts it in the public domain.

Fact-check

What's actually wrong here

The attribution to Chavez himself is not the problem — his own union publishes the line as his. What's wrong is the citation that travels with it, and the impression that this is a sentence he spoke in one breath.

“Address to the Commonwealth Club,” San Francisco, 9 November 1984 False citation

This is the source most often attached to the quote, and it is demonstrably wrong. The complete text of the November 9, 1984 address ↗ runs 3,491 words and never once uses the words “achievement,” “ambition,” “prosperity,” or “aspiration.” An independent transcript ↗ agrees, and UFW's own page about that speech ↗ does not quote the line either.

Cesar Chavez Spliced

Nearly every version in circulation — including the UFW's own ↗ — carries an ellipsis between the two halves. That mark is doing real work: it joins two separate remarks. The seamless one-sentence version quoted from podiums is a compression, not a transcript.

No primary source at all Unsourced

The aggregators pass it along with nothing behind it. A-Z Quotes ↗ lists it with no citation; PassItOn ↗ credits only “Cesar Chavez, Civil rights activist”; and Goodreads ↗ — which warns that its quotes are community-added and unverified — names no work.

The line is very likely Chavez in substance: the United Farm Workers ↗, the union he co-founded, publishes it as his words, and it echoes what he argued for thirty years. But no speech, letter, or interview containing it has ever been produced — and the 1984 address everyone cites plainly does not.

Context

Why this one is hard to pin down

Chavez is not a typical fake-quote magnet. He was a working organizer, not an essayist, and much of what he said was said out loud — at rallies, on picket lines, in union halls, in hundreds of interviews across thirty years. A great deal of it was never transcribed, and what was transcribed is scattered across union archives rather than a collected edition. That leaves a genuine gap between “he probably said this” and “here is where he said it.”

This quote lives in that gap. It carries the endorsement of the institutions closest to him — his own union publishes it, and a sitting president put it in a proclamation — while resting on no citable document at all. The result is a line that is almost certainly authentic in substance and completely unverifiable in fact.

Endorsed by his own union, quoted by a president, and traceable to nothing.

How the ellipsis gives it away

Look closely at how the quote is printed, including on the UFW's own page: “…prosperity for our community…Our ambitions must be broad enough…” That ellipsis sits between the two halves in virtually every version in circulation, and it is not decorative — it marks a splice. Whoever assembled the compilation was joining material that did not originally run together.

This matters for anyone quoting it. The smooth, single-sentence version that appears on posters and in commencement speeches is a compression of two separate remarks, not a sentence Chavez ever delivered in one breath. Reproducing it without the ellipsis quietly upgrades an edited compilation into a transcript.

It also explains why the Commonwealth Club citation could spread so easily. Once a quote has no source of its own, it tends to get adopted by the most famous speech in the author's catalogue — and Chavez's 1984 Commonwealth Club address is the speech everyone knows.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Leadership Success Purpose

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Education of the Heart: Cesar Chavez in his own wordsufw.org

The United Farm Workers' own thematic quote compilation — the quote appears here under “Community,” with no date or source, as with every line on the page.
Presidential Proclamation — Cesar Chavez Day, 2012obamawhitehouse.archives.gov

Obama quotes the line verbatim, introduced only by “He told us” — the highest-profile appearance, and it cites nothing.
Address to the Commonwealth Club, 9 November 1984 (full text)chavez.cde.ca.gov

The California Department of Education's transcript of the speech usually named as the source. The complete text does not contain the quote.
Address to the Commonwealth Club (independent transcript)historyisaweapon.com

A second, independently edited transcript — an excerpt from Jensen & Hammerback's The Words of Cesar Chavez (2002), pp. 122–26 and 128–29, which also does not contain the line.
Cesar Chavezen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced Chavez page, covering four major speeches from 1965 to 1990. It does not carry this quote in any section.
Chavez's vision in the 1984 Commonwealth Club addressufw.org

UFW's own account of the 1984 speech — notably, it does not quote this line either, despite UFW publishing it elsewhere.

The man behind the words

Who was Cesar Chavez?

Cesar Chavez

1927–1993 · American labor leader & co-founder of the United Farm Workers

Cesar Chavez was an American farm worker, labor organizer, and civil rights leader who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association — later the United Farm Workers — with Dolores Huerta in 1962. Through grape boycotts, marches, and long public fasts, he built the first enduring farm workers' union in the United States and made “Si Se Puede” a rallying cry far beyond the fields. His rhetoric consistently subordinated individual success to collective advancement, which is precisely why this quote sits so plausibly in his mouth — and why so few people have thought to check it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

No primary source located. Published without citation in United Farm Workers, “Education of the Heart: Cesar Chavez in His Own Words,” ufw.org (undated quote compilation), and quoted without citation in Barack Obama, “Presidential Proclamation—Cesar Chavez Day, 2012,” March 23, 2012.

MLA (9th ed.)

"Education of the Heart: Cesar Chavez in His Own Words." United Farm Workers, ufw.org.

APA (7th ed.)

United Farm Workers. (n.d.). Education of the heart: Cesar Chavez in his own words. ufw.org.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-cannot-seek-achievement-for-ourselves-and-forget-about

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