Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

I am a friend of the workingman, and I would rather be his friend than be one.

Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Labor is no disgrace.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.

Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.