Quotes About Labor

How does capitalism pit groups that receive care against groups that provide care while it profits and exploits both?

BRAHMA, n. He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu and destroyed by Siva—a rather neater division of labor than is found among the deities of some other nations.

The trouble with being able to lift heavy things is that when heavy things need lifting folk step out of the way and smile at you. He'd done some tough jobs to earn a crust for him

Akkora csúszómászó volt, hogy munkát vállalhatott volna egy terráriumban.

Better off digging than getting buried.

No one likes to shake hands with the man who empties the latrine pits eitherm but pits have to be emptied all the same. Otherwise the world fills up with shit.

Work and pray, live on hay,You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

Work is a prayer, and I start off every morning dedicating it to our Creator.

The rise of Western capitalism is rooted in the global seizing of the land, resources, and labor of people of color by violent means. Commercial and industrial capitalism develops over this era because of the expanding Atlantic system of slavery.

The ancient writer Suetonius tells the story that an inventor around 70 CE displayed to a Roman emperor a machine that could move columns, only to be dismissed with the objection that such labor-saving devices would cause the poor to starve by robbing them of employment.

Act! act!—it is to that end we are here. Should we fret ourselves that others are not so perfect as we are, when we ourselves are only somewhat less imperfect than they? Is not this our greatest perfection,—the vocation which has been given to us,—that we must labour for the perfecting of others? Let us rejoice in the prospect of that widely extended field which we are called to cultivate! Let us rejoice that power is given to us, and that our task is infinite!

The Italian philosopher Paolo Virno says we have moved from having a "proletariat"—a solid block of manual workers with jobs—to a "precariat," a shifting mass of chronically insecure people who don't know whether they will have any work next week and may never have a stable job.

It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - "voluntarily" sell - himself every day and hour to the "beast of property."

If you inquire what the people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere." The human race is but a monotonous affair. Most of them labour the greater part of their time for mere subsistence; and the scanty portion of freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every exertion to get rid of it. Oh, the destiny of man!

The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.

How withered away one can be from a life of unremitting toil.

Strikes (1981) are real life. It took up seven weeks of real time. That's a fifth of a pregnancy.

What is the good of life if its chief element, and that which must always be its chief element, is odious? No, the only true economy is to arrange so that your daily labor shall be itself a joy.

Labor is life! 'Tis the still water faileth; Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth; Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth.

My life is about building and working and wrenching on some cars.

Better a long life of toil than a short one of ease.

Labor is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God!

Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labour of all.

Labor is service and service is life. And when we serve something more than ourselves, we feel alive.