WORK QUOTES VI

quotations about work

We can imagine a world in which there is no work. A world bathed in incessant summer, whose seed-times and harvests are ever mingling, whose springing influences perpetually ascend, whose fruitage perpetually ripens through all the procession of its golden year. A world in which man would never feel the sting of want, And where the felicities of being would unfold without his effort. But we cannot conceive any such world, connected with human peculiarities and necessities, one half, one tithe so glorious as our old world of struggle and of labor. For wherever God has admitted man's agency the noblest results, the achievements of real worth and splendor are the fruits of patient and sinewy toil.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words

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Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.

CHARLES BUXTON

Notes of Thought

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There is no such thing as unfortunate genius; if a man or woman is fit for work, God appoints the field.

ADA ISAACS MENKEN

Infelicia


Like bees that are drowned in the honey which they make, the workmen are crushed by the wealth they create.

ABRAHAM MILLER

Unmoral Maxims

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There is no substitute for hard work.

THOMAS EDISON

Life

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Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

THOMAS CARLYLE

Past and Present


Most work, let's face it, is not the least bit loveable, and a good deal of it is barely tolerable. And this isn't going to change, no matter how many Steve Jobs quotes we share on Facebook. Tough, low-wage work isn't going away. In fact, jobs in the service and care industries are booming. But a "do what you love" ethos hides such work, and the conditions of its workers, by keeping individuals focused on the self and the belief that there is bliss to be found in a job if only they strive harder than those around them.

SIMON CASTLES

"Do what you love mantra devalues hard work", The Age, February 9, 2016


I love working for myself; it's so empowering. Except when I call in sick. I always know when I'm lying.

RITA RUDNER

stand-up routine

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A work well begun is half ended.

PLATO

attributed, Day's Collacon

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The more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker.

KARL MARX

"Alienated Labor", Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

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Thus have men become the creatures of their work, and thus has work become to them, in many respects, a curse. When work enslaves a group of faculties, and employs and develops that group to the neglect or the death of all others, then does it surpass and abuse its office. This it is that makes one-sided men, partial men, fractional men. This it is that puts the menial stamp upon men, that brands them with the name of their tyrant-master. This it is which spoils manhood, and debases its subjects to the level of their calling. This it is which too often transforms men into lawyers and financiers and ministers and merchants and farmers and hod-carriers -- beings who can do one thing, and nothing else.

JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND

"Work and Play", Complete Works

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Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

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No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society.

SIGMUND FREUD

Civilization and Its Discontents

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Retirement wasn't a reward at the end of a well-run career ... it was a void surrounded by endless dull hours, haunted by memories of work.

NORA ROBERTS

Blue Smoke

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Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

J. M. BARRIE

attributed, The New Dictionary of Thoughts

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"Do what you love" has become a modern-day mantra that devalues actual work while obscuring the vast majority of workers. After all, if some work is elevated to being worthy of love, where does that leave all those doing unglamorous and menial work? They are nowhere, blanked from the culture, their lowly status even seen as somehow deserved because they didn't love hard enough.... We need to acknowledge all work as work, whatever it is, and to stand in solidarity with all who labour, whether they love their job or not. Our concern should not be with the select few occupations that are loveable but with making all employment more likeable -- through fair wages, job security, safe conditions and reasonable hours.

SIMON CASTLES

"Do what you love mantra devalues hard work", The Age, February 9, 2016


A friendly dynamic among co-workers is so integral to our well-being, in fact, that economists say having a work pal increases your happiness as much as a $100,000 raise would.

KATIE UNDERWOOD

"Why developing friendships at work is so important", Canadian Business, January 27, 2016


See that bunch of loafers on the street corner. They seldom work, and how they live no one can tell. Are they happy? Nay, nay; the good boxes on which they sit testify to their restlessness, for they have tried to while away their long hours by whittling them, when there was nothing else on hand to help pass the time. Certainly the idle, yawning, gaping, stretching loafer is not an ideal of a happy life.

NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY

Helps to Happiness


Formerly when a man worked ten hours a day, it was called economic slavery; nowadays it is called moonlighting.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


It just seems so useless to have to work so hard and nothin' ever really seems to come from it.

TOM PETTY

Here Comes My Girl

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