LABOR QUOTES
quotations about labor
The law-abiding citizen by his labor serves both himself and his fellow man and thereby integrates himself peacefully into the social order. The robber, on the other hand, is intent, not on honest toil, but on the forcible appropriation of the fruits of others' labor.
LUDWIG VON MISES
Liberalism
There are some with brains and some without. It makes for a better division of labour.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Baal
Labor clears the forest, and drains the morass, and makes the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose. Labor drives the plow, and scatters the seed, and reaps the harvest, and grinds the corn, and converts it into bread, the staff of life. Labor, tending the pastures and sweeping the waters as well as cultivating the soil, provides with daily sustenance the nine hundred millions of the family of man.
NEWMAN HALL
"The Dignity of Labor", The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
KARL MARX
Capital
How can we rest if we never labor?
SUSAN H. BOGGS
"Labor", Poems
Labor conquers all things.
VIRGIL
attributed, Day's Collacon
What is earned with hard labor is eaten with pleasure.
CHINESE PROVERB
The greatest part of mankind ... are given up to labor, and enslaved to the necessity of their mean condition; whose lives are worn out only in the provisions for living.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
When every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied.... His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
EMILY DICKINSON
"The Chariot"
Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Blessed is the labor that exhausts us without end.
DANA GIOIA
"Prayer at Winter Solstice", 99 Poems: New & Selected
Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
Of the laws of nature, on which the condition of man depends, that which is attended with the greatest number of consequences, is the necessity of labor for obtaining the means of subsistence, as well as the means of the greatest part of our pleasure.
JAMES MILL
The Article Government
Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men.
HENRY FORD
introduction, My Life and Work
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Adam's Curse", In the Seven Woods
Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Something Left Undone"
Love labour: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayest for physique. It is wholesome for the body, and good for the mind. It prevents the fruits of idleness, which many times come of nothing to do, and leads many to do what is worse than nothing.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Year after year, unto death; yea, what a weariness is it!
Labour, for the pale-faced scribe, drudging at his hated desk,
Who bartereth for needful pittance the untold gold of health;
Labour, with fear, for the merchant, whose hopes are ventured on the sea;
Labour, with care, for the man of law, responsible for his gains;
Labour, with envy and annoyance, where strangers will thee wealth;
Labour, with indolence and gloom, where wealth falleth from a father;
Labour, unto all, whether aching thews, or aching head, or spirit--
The curse on the sons of men, in all their states, is labour.
Nevertheless, to the diligent, labour bringeth blessing:
The thought of duty sweeteneth toil, and travail is as pleasure;
And time spent in doing, hath a comfort that is not for the idle.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy