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

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.

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

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

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.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

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

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.

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

Labor is no disgrace.

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.

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.