It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.

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

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

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

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

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

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

Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.

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.

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.

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

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

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