Quotes About Labor

Labor, being itself a commodity, is measured as such by the labor time needed to produce the labor-commodity. And what is needed to produce this labor-commodity? Just enough labor time to produce the objects indispensable to the constant maintenance of labor, that is, to keep the worker alive and in a condition to propagate his race. The natural price of labor is no other than the wage minimum.

Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; whatfrom the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer.

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.

If you practice an excellent virtue without perceiving the taste of its aid, do not marvel; for until a man becomes humble, he will not receive a reward for his labor. Recompense is given, not for labor, but for humility.

I've been active in a minor way compared to professional activists. I was a labor leader. I led two labor strikes. I've manipulated boards. I've led marches. I've done many things.

I wish I had read Sacred Pregnancy when I was pregnant instead of the dozen books I had to piece together to try to make sense of it all. Anni Daulter has created what should be the new standard for today's mom: birth journals, labor workbooks, pregnancy memoirs, and holistic wisdom. It is gentle and enlightening, and lays the foundation for what we know helps women have the labor and birth they want and deserve: support, self-knowledge, and empowerment.

When my work does speak to audiences, when it creates audiences around it, I feel a little less crazy because what that means is that there are folks out there who are interested in thinking about themselves and the world through a prism. The prism is a labor and there can be a pleasure in labor.

If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.

To want a job that exercises a man's capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the "sole prerogative" to determine the products.

Our economy today depends upon women in the labor force. One out of three workers is a woman. Today, there are almost 25 million women employed, and their number is rising faster than the number of men in the labor force.

Charles Kernaghan is a legitimate American hero... Through his determination he has forced the leadership in our country and many other countries around the world to pay attention. Kernaghan has done more to expose child labor than has the whole Department of Labor that has a budget of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, because he has the guts and determination to do it.

There is nothing more dangerous than idleness...In labor there is salvation; in labor there is safety.

I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labor. Men save labor until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race, but for all. I will not have the enrichment of a few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity or love of their kind, but greed and avarice.

Finance ministers and central bank governors have the seats at the table, not labor unions or labor ministers. Finance ministers and central bank governors are linked to financial communities in their countries, so they push policies that reflect the viewpoints and interests of the financial community and barely hear the voices of those who are the first victims of dictated policies.

Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.

Sulky labor, and the labor of sorrow are little worth: if you could only shed tranquility over the conscience and infuse joy into the soul, you would do more to make the man a thorough worker than if you could lend him the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of Briareus.

This priesthood became a closed group, able to control enormous wealth and incomes, and concerned very largely with the study of the solar and astronomical periodicities on which there influence was originally based. With the surplus thus created, the priesthood was able to command human labor in huge amounts and to direct this labor from the simple tillage of the peasant peoples to the diversified and specialized activities that constitute civilized living.

Labor has been severely undermined, but that's happened before. In the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually crushed, in large part by Wilson's Red Scare, but it dramatically revived in the 1930s. It spearheaded the social-democratic New-Deal style changes which were beneficial to the country - not sufficient, but beneficial. That could happen again.

Part of the NAFTA legislation required studies of labor practices, and there was quite a good study that came out by a labor historian on the use of NAFTA to undermine and destroy unions.

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. 'But notwithstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

I deeply believe that if the Australian Labor Party, a party of which I have been a proud member for more than 30 years, is to have the best future for our nation, then it must change fundamentally its culture and to end the power of faceless men. Australia must be governed by the people, not by the factions.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.

We also ought to recognize that unpaid labor falls predominantly to women. The other thing I would do in countries like the U.S. is to show more men, even in TV ads, doing household work. Only two percent of ads show men doing chores, and yet we know they actually do several hours of it in real life. Those images affect young boys and girls.

I like that feeling when you’re making art, that you’re taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.

All converted people should labor to adorn the doctrine they profess by humility. If they can do nothing else, they can strive to be humble.

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

I think the good part of the crisis is that finally, everybody is going to have to come to the table. That means the mayor's office, the board (of supervisors), the labor council, the chamber, small business. You end a recession healthier than you were when you went into it.

Even the greatest actions of a celebrated person labor under this disadvantage, that however surprising and extraordinary they may be, they are no more than what are expected from him.

Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest.

With this lodging and diet our extreme toil in bearing and planting palisades so strained and bruised us and our continual labor in the extremity of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause sufficient to have made us as miserable in our native country or any other place in the world

Virtue's guard is labor; ease, her sleep.

I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.

Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so; I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.

The Sexual Revolution offered us women this deal: you can particiapate in higher education and the labor market, as long as you agree to chemically neuter yourselves during your twenties, and endure expensive, humiliating, and possibly dangerous infertility treatment during your thirties and forties.

I am convinced that there is no simple formula or technique that I could give you or that you could give your students that would immediately facilitate mastering the ability to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Nor do I believe that the Lord will ever allow someone to conceive a pattern that would invariably and immediately open the channels of spiritual communication. We grow when we labor to recognize the guidance of the Holy Ghost as we struggle to communicate our needs to our Father in Heaven in moments of dire need or overflowing gratitude.

To love life through our labor is to be intimate with life's inmost secrets.

I am a model of positivity compared to the kinds of vitriol, the kinds of destructive criticisms that Labor members of parliament have been making of each other.

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.

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.

Fear of pain has resulted in many women losing sight of birth as normal and natural, and of themselves as powerful and capable. Labor is an opportunity for women to learn about themselves and discover the strength and wisdom inherent in their bodies.

The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.

There is a knowledge which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labor.

Consider that as a principle of love is the main principle in the heart of a real Christian, so the labor of love, is the main business of the Christian life.

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.

I think that the agriculture system in general is rooted in racism - consider that historically black labor on plantations was the backbone of the economy. These workers didn't reap the benefit of that system.