quotations about work
The chances of a man's succeeding who does not love his work are very small. For all success costs labor.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
If you don't find a way to do something as work that is fulfilling and enjoyable, then your life is going to be really sad.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI
interview, May 3, 2003
We can imagine a world in which there is no work. A world bathed in incessant summer, whose seed-times and harvests are ever mingling, whose springing influences perpetually ascend, whose fruitage perpetually ripens through all the procession of its golden year. A world in which man would never feel the sting of want, And where the felicities of being would unfold without his effort. But we cannot conceive any such world, connected with human peculiarities and necessities, one half, one tithe so glorious as our old world of struggle and of labor. For wherever God has admitted man's agency the noblest results, the achievements of real worth and splendor are the fruits of patient and sinewy toil.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Work restores humankind and all its attributes to the savage animal condition that was its original intended state.
ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Lust
Many companies see happiness at work as an intangible "nice to have", rather than an important organisational priority. While you can't force employees to be happy -- or control every factor that contributes to happiness -- it's still possible to create the conditions that will help to promote happiness and positivity at work.
ROBERT HALF
"Happiness at work -- is it natural or necessary?", Business Zone, March 31, 2017
Playing games at work is a time-honored tradition. Windows computers come with Minesweeper and Solitaire for a reason, you know. But getting caught by the boss slacking off on company time isn't terribly good for your paycheck. If you're gaming on the clock, you need to be playing something that lets you cover your tracks.
K. THOR JENSEN
"The best games to secretly play at work", Geek, February 5, 2016
Most work, let's face it, is not the least bit loveable, and a good deal of it is barely tolerable. And this isn't going to change, no matter how many Steve Jobs quotes we share on Facebook. Tough, low-wage work isn't going away. In fact, jobs in the service and care industries are booming. But a "do what you love" ethos hides such work, and the conditions of its workers, by keeping individuals focused on the self and the belief that there is bliss to be found in a job if only they strive harder than those around them.
SIMON CASTLES
"Do what you love mantra devalues hard work", The Age, February 9, 2016
There is no substitute for hard work.
THOMAS EDISON
Life
Inter-cubicle friendship is every bit as good for your health and your output as an ergonomically correct ball chair. Even in our furiously multi-tasking world, work should still come with a good dose of play. And, okay, maybe some free pretzels too.
KATIE UNDERWOOD
"Why developing friendships at work is so important", Canadian Business, January 27, 2016
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
L. P. JACKS
Education Through Recreation
The humblest workman has his place,
Which no one else can fill.
MAUD LINDSAY
"The Little Gray Pony", Mother Stories
Work alone isn't enough for me and mine;
we know how to break our backs, but the great dream
Of my fathers was to be good at doing nothing.
CESARE PAVESE
"Ancestors"
Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky.
HENRY FORD
My Life and Work
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.
DR. SEUSS
The King's Stilts
Formerly when a man worked ten hours a day, it was called economic slavery; nowadays it is called moonlighting.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
If every man should work at that for which nature fitted him, the cows would be well tended.
FLORIAN
attributed, Day's Collacon
How many people do you know who are obsessed with their work, who are type A or have stress related diseases and who can't slow down? They can't slow down because they use their routine to distract themselves, to reduce life to only its practical considerations. And they do this to avoid recalling how uncertain they are about why they live.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy
What the working man sells is not directly his Labor, but his Laboring Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Law, but certainly by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed to sell his laboring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer.
KARL MARX
Value, Price, and Profit
Work is the Rent we pay for our time on Earth.
TUBBY CLAYTON
attributed, Saga Magazine, January 2009