Quotes About Labor

Toil is no source of shame; idleness is shame.

Mine is the horny hand of toil.

The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.

If you think about it, many of the great inventions of the last 200 years were designed to replace human labor. Tractors were developed to substitute mechanical power for human physical toil.

I cleaned many a toilet.

I'd find it demeaning to be cleaning toilets.

I cleaned toilets and shined shoes.

There is no surer token of a little mind than to imagine that anything in the way of physical labor is dishonoring.

I love to sew. But when it's something that's being repetitive over and over and over again, it takes a toll.

He wished, he said, to draw his listeners' attention to "the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government." But labor, the rail-splitter-turned-lawyer declared

Objective thirteen on the Knights of Labor's 1876 platform was "to secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work." Women were seen and heard on the front lines, and were revered by embattled workingmen.

When the first women started work in the barracks on 25 August 1942, Siemens & Halske joined three other major German manufacturers- IG Farbe at Auschwitz, Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG at Mauthausen and Heinkel at Sachsenhausen-in using concertation-camp slave labour. So pleased was the company with its new Ravensbruck factory that Rudolf Dingel...wrote to the Reichsfuhrer SS thanking him warmly. Himmler's kindness towards Siemens inspired him with 'particular joy.

The terraced slopes were a marvel of human muscle, a compelling demonstration of what China's giant workforce could accomplish over generations. Even so, many from their region had left farming for trade.

Everybody in my world knew that regular work was only another name for being robbed and dying of boredom.

As long as people think poverty is the problem," Ganz explained, "they're missing the whole point. Poverty is evidence of a problem; it's not the source of the problem. They're all based on the weakening of collective institutions—the decline of labor, of common interests. The core question is not about poverty, it's really about democracy. The galloping poverty in the United States is evidence of a retreat from democratic beliefs and practices.

In the decades after the Civil War, as bankrupt former Confederate states with a historical aversion to raising taxes tried to restore their public finances, priosner leasing became standard practice across the South. Not only did it negate the need to build large prisons but, since private companies essentially bought the right to prisoners' labor from the state, it also served to generate revenue.

Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside it. Whatever we are called to "do" is not a "job" but a sacred vocation.

Isn't this concept—something I would rather not be doing—one of the most recognizable definitions of work for most of us?

To this day, I hate walnuts and I hate onions because on weekends when the walnuts and onions were in season, we were out there first thing in the morning and out there until the sun went down topping onions or picking walnuts.

The unions say 'last hired - first fired ', we say hire and fire based on merit. We want the best and brightest in the classroom.

Maybe he knows it's cheaper to bribe a justice than to pay human labor.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt. 11:28–30)

By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.

Without the institution of slavery, civilization would never have been achieved, for no one could ever have done anything intellectual if he had to spend all his time hewing and digging and fighting.