Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1903Quotes
Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1836The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.
—Eugene V. Debs, 1905Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.
—Slogan of the National Labor Union of the United States, 1866I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
—Jerome K. Jerome, 1889It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
—Upton Sinclair, 1935All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BCI am a friend of the workingman, and I would rather be his friend than be one.
—Clarence Darrow, 1932To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCGod sells us all things at the price of labor.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500“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.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.
—Charles Lamb, 1805