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.

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

“Work” does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.

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.

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.

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

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

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

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

The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.

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

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

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