Labor is no disgrace.

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.

I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

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

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

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.

A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

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