Quotes About Labor

Man makes machines to man the machines that make the machines.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.

The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.

Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth because they take away a man's independence.

They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.

There is no right more universal and more sacred, because lying so near the root of existence, than the right of men to their own labor.

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.

Judge men less by the labels they wear than by their persistent labour for sure if slow progress.

We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land.

That a majority of the Abolitionists in this place would patronize a free labor store, in preference to others, I do not doubt; but we do not muster money in Cincinnati.

I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.

Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.

There are only three ways by which any individual can get wealth — by work, by gift or by theft. And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much.

The more successful capitalists are in cutting their wage costs, the less money workers will have to buy back what those same capitalists produce. It's a contradiction.

Work harder, work longer, and earn less because the mafia needs your money.

Prosperity is the fruit of labor. It begins with saving money.

Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table.

If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.

The thing most worth doing in this modern world [is to] create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work.

owning capital is not a productive activity.