quotations about work
Anyone can do the job when things are going right.
ERNEST K. GANN
Fate is the Hunter
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
It just seems so useless to have to work so hard and nothin' ever really seems to come from it.
TOM PETTY
Here Comes My Girl
People say they love hard workers but they really love natural talent--a bias with troubling implications when it comes to hiring.
ERIC JAFFE
"Hard Work Is Overrated", fastcodesign, January 19, 2016
See that bunch of loafers on the street corner. They seldom work, and how they live no one can tell. Are they happy? Nay, nay; the good boxes on which they sit testify to their restlessness, for they have tried to while away their long hours by whittling them, when there was nothing else on hand to help pass the time. Certainly the idle, yawning, gaping, stretching loafer is not an ideal of a happy life.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
Fast forward to today, and it's clear that the definition of work is continuing to morph, now even faster than before. Savvy employers realize there is little time to waste and that they must adapt to a variety of cultural and technological changes if they want to attract and retain talent.
PAIGE O'NEILL
"The definition of work is shifting", Network World, March 13, 2017
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
Slow work produces fine goods.
CHINESE PROVERB
The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky.
HENRY FORD
My Life and Work
If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn't anything you can't do if you want to.
JIM HENSON
It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider
Labor produces marvels for the rich but it produces deprivation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back to barbaric labor, and it turns the remainder into machines.
KARL MARX
"Alienated Labor", Economic and Philosophic
A man who looks for easy work goes to bed tired.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Family and work. Family and work. I can let them be at war, with guilt as their nuclear weapon and mutually assured destruction as their aim, or I can let them nourish each other.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
The Writing Life
Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not to be the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery only if it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Gay Science
None but those who work are entitled to eat.
AESOP
"The Brazier and His Dog", Aesop's Fables
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
Remember, work, well done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man.
GEORGE S. CLASON
The Richest Man in Babylon
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison--
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
PHILIP LARKIN
"Toads"
Work that is pure toil, done solely for the sake of the money it earns, is also sheer drudgery because it is stultifying rather than self improving.
MORTIMER ADLER
A Vision of the Future: Twelve Ideas for a Better Life and a Better Society