quotations about work
Work is the activity undertaken with our hands which gives objectivity to the world.
KEITH GRINT
The Sociology of Work
The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.
PAUL LAFARGUE
The Right to Be Lazy
How many people do you know who are obsessed with their work, who are type A or have stress related diseases and who can't slow down? They can't slow down because they use their routine to distract themselves, to reduce life to only its practical considerations. And they do this to avoid recalling how uncertain they are about why they live.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy
Work alone isn't enough for me and mine;
we know how to break our backs, but the great dream
Of my fathers was to be good at doing nothing.
CESARE PAVESE
"Ancestors"
Work restores humankind and all its attributes to the savage animal condition that was its original intended state.
ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Lust
If you don't find a way to do something as work that is fulfilling and enjoyable, then your life is going to be really sad.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI
interview, May 3, 2003
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
L. P. JACKS
Education Through Recreation
Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
There is no substitute for hard work.
THOMAS EDISON
Life
The humblest workman has his place,
Which no one else can fill.
MAUD LINDSAY
"The Little Gray Pony", Mother Stories
If we look at things from a results level -- what hours one puts in -- which is, I think, where we're going in the future of work, then we're going to have to balance our lives a little better. And, therefore, the organisational challenge really will be how we facilitate people to do that.
MARGOT SLATTERY
"Data is absolutely essential to the future of work", Silicon Republic, March 23, 2017
Caring about the quality of your work causes stress. Stress can kill you. Maintain good health by remembering that the stockholders are complete strangers who have never done anything for you.
SCOTT ADAMS
Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland
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
The chances of a man's succeeding who does not love his work are very small. For all success costs labor.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
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
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.
DR. SEUSS
The King's Stilts
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
Labor produces marvels for the rich but it produces deprivation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back to barbaric labor, and it turns the remainder into machines.
KARL MARX
"Alienated Labor", Economic and Philosophic
Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky.
HENRY FORD
My Life and Work