Quotes About Labor

All labour is directed towards producing some effect.

There's a lot of labor involved in the birth of a new town.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man.

Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.

I'm a lifelong believer in trade unionism.

Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.

You won't catch Liberal Democrats describing trade unionists as wreckers.

My overall message for labor members is... that we understand that the benefits of trade are clear, but the disruption and the dislocation are painfully concentrated and we can't ignore them.

Free trade should not mean free labor.

America has global trade with plenty of nations that provide inexpensive labor, but it's better for us when they're in our own hemisphere, rather than sending that business halfway around the world.

In the ancient world, taxes were paid in kind: landowners paid in crops or livestock; the landless paid with their labor. Taxing trade made medieval monarchs rich and funded the early-modern state.

I do think we need to hold countries accountable who violate trade agreements that are already in place. We need to get stronger about enforcement, that in the future if we strike a trade agreement, toughening up labor standards and environmental standards and enforcement standards is something we absolutely need to do.

In May 2007, congressional Democrats and the Bush administration agreed to a plan to include environmental and international labor standards in upcoming trade agreements.

My brother and I had saved $15,000 by working many years nailing fruit crates together.

Do not think about or do anything without a spiritual purpose, whereby it is done for God. For If you travel without purpose, you shall labor in vain.

I wish it grew on trees, but it takes hard work to make money.

How vainly men themselves amaze, / To win the palm, the oak, or bays; / And their incessant labours see / Crowned from some single herb or tree.

If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.

Increasing the minimum wagewill put billions annually into the Social Security trust fund.

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand.

I learned that, to a trade unionist, strikebreakers—scabs—are the lowest form of human life.

The Bourbons' "basic goal," Gore believed, "was to lure Northern capital and industry southward by promising what was to become a standard package: tax benefits; a large, docile, and non-union pool of cheap labor; minimal restrictions and regulations; and sympathetic local governments and police.

nineteenth-century Populist Party leader Tom Watson as he spoke to his white and black followers: "The accident of color can make no difference in the interest of farmers, croppers, and laborers … You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings."3

He knew how dignity of work meant that a hard day's labor should provide a decent standard of living.