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.

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

“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.

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

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.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

Labor is no disgrace.

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

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

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.

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

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