Quotes About Labor

How much better life seemed to me now that it seemed susceptible of being illuminated, taken out of the shadows, restored from our ceaseless falsification of it to the truth of what it was, in short, realized in a book! How happy the writer of a book like that would be, I thought, what a labour awaited him!

Yet not so strictly hath our Lord impos'd /Labor, as to debar when we need /Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,/ food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse/Of looks and smiles, for smiles from Reason flow,/To brutes denied, and are of Love the food, Love not the lowest end of human life. For not to irksome toil, but to delight/ He made us, and delight to reason join'd.

One must labor for beauty as for bread

An hour was allowed at noon for dinner and more chores. We stayed in the field until dark, then supper, and still more chores, family worship, and to bed; making all together a hard, sweaty day of about 16 or 17 hours. Think of that, ye blessed 8-hour-day laborers!

The modern slave trader assures himself (or herself) that the desperate people are better off earning one dollar a day than no dollars at all, and that they are receiving the opportunity to become integrated into the larger world community.

In reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of (a piece of) work than high wages. (quoting Adam Smith - ch. (III - From Corporatism to Democracy)

We are always in these days endeavoring to separate intellect and manual labor; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense.

It can be met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labor are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labor.

It does not cost money only. It costs degradation. You do not merely employ these people. You also tread upon them.

He spent more time laying pipe than laying tile, if you catch my drift.

people who were working that day, the ten-of-twelve.

You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain't a union, it's a goddam club! They got you fightin' white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain't but two sides in this world — them that work and them that don't. You work, they don't. That's all you need to know about the enemy.

Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.

You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.

I've always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I've never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.

The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes.

Work is the only good thing.

Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need-this is man.

The receding waves of foreign peon labor are leaving California agriculture to the mercies of our own people. The old methods of intimidation and starvation perfected against the foreign peons are being used against the new white migrant workers. But they will not be successful.

This nickel, unlike most money, has actually done a job of work, has been physically responsible for a reaction.

The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes.

just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans bring in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.

we Americans bring in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.

And the owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned.