Quotes About Labor

What about precarious labor? It's actually not the most efficient form of labor at all. They were much more efficient when they had loyalty to their workers and people were allowed to be creative and contribute - you know that what precarious labor does is that it's the best weapon ever made to depoliticize labor. They're always putting the political in front of the economic.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

We have no paupers ... The great mass of our [United States] population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. ... Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?

So much were employers of wage-labor unenthusiastic about proletarianization that, in addition to fostering the gender age division of labor, they also encouraged, in their employment patters and through their influence in the political arena, recognition of defined ethnic groups, seeking to link them to specific allocated roles in the labor-force, with different levels of real remuneration for their work. Ethnicity created a cultural crust which consolidated the patterns of semi-proletarian household structures.

It would be well for those interested to reflect whether there now exists, or ever has existed, a wealthy and civilized community in which one portion did not live on the labor of another; and whether the form in which slavery exists in the South is not but one modification of this universal condition... Let those who are interested remember that labor is the only source of wealth, and how small a portion of it, in all old and civilized countries, even the best governed, is left to those by whose labor wealth is created.

Where love is there is no labor; and if there be labor, that labor is loved.

Our philosophy about activity and our attitude about hard work will affect the quality of our lives. What we decide about the rightful ratio of labor to rest will establish a certain work ethic. That work ethic - our attitude about the amount of labor we are willing to commit to future fortune - will determine how substantial or how meager that fortune turns out to be.

Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny.

Other than our love our labor is one of the most sacred gifts we can give. When your labor is your love, life is sacred. Love what you do or change.

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

... continual hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil, brings forth thorns and thistles. Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our dispositions; the whole system become worn out with toil and fatigue; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care but little whether we live or die.

If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.

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.

It is notorious that, whenever the demand for labor is much greater than the supply, or the wages of labor are much higher than the expenses of living, very many, even on the ordinary laboring class, are remarkable for indolence, and work no more than compelled by necessity.

It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison.

My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.

In the postindustrial age, labor is seen as essentially uninvolved in the social process because there is no need for assertive labor.

Labor is superior to capital and precedes capital. Without labor, there is no capital.

We are the necessary element since we expend nothing. Management can create its own capital -- the profits. Its business would grow and profits increase. Labor would prosper as well, while the price of the product would remain constant, the prosperity of industry, labor and management would continually increase. We Jews glory in the fact that the stupid goy have never realized that we are the parasites consuming an increasing portion of production while the producers are continually receiving less and less.

The circulating medium being issued only by those who labor, they would suddenly become invested with all the wealth and all the power; and those who did not labor, be they ever so rich now, would as suddenly become poor and powerless.

You are a free man, and let no organization come between you and your best interests. Do not let any man, or any body of men, tell you where you shall work, or where you shall not work, when you shall work, or when, you shall not work. If a man wants to belong to a labor organization, let him belong. If he does not want to belong to a labor organization, let him have perfect liberty to stay out. You own yourself. Let no man put a manacle on your hand, or foot, or head, or heart.

I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.

Smart businesses do not look at labor costs alone anymore. They do look at market access, transportation, telecommunications infrastructure and the education and skill level of the workforce, the development of capital and the regulatory market.

Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable.

The dignity of labor depends not on what you do, but how you do it.

Like most terms of political discourse, socialism has more or less, lost its meaning. Socialism used to mean something. If you go back far enough it meant basically control of production by producers, elimination of wage labor, democratization of all spheres of life; production, commerce, education, media, workers control of factories, community control of communities, and so on. That was socialism once. But it hasn't meant that for a hundred years. Socialism meant something different.

If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor.

In all my activities as Armament Minister I never once visited a labor camp, and cannot, therefore, give any information about them.

I like that there's very little mystery in how the artwork is actually made. It's the labor and the focus and the precision that drives it to the next level.

When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it's finished. A certain point comes at which you can't do any more work on it because you know it will kill the sentence.

Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

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.

Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

The people's instincts are still right. You see them come to the rescue of someone-a child who falls down a well-hundreds of people rush to help, and labor and equipment are volunteered without any thought of who's going to pay for it. This is a basic feeling in Americans. They don't stand back in such a circumstance and ask what the government's going to do about it.

The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have a square deal, and in addition, all private citizens shall have a square deal.

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

The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury?

The darling schemes and fondest hopes of man are frequently frustrated by time. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes, disappointment laughs at the curious fabric, formed by so many efforts, and gay with so many brilliant colors, and, while the artists imagine the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful web, and leaves nothing behind.

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.

To love and to labor is the sum of living.

The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.

The romantics were reacting against a modern culture that divided individuals from themselves (through specialisation in the division of labor), from others (the competitive market place) and from nature, which had been reduced down to a machine through technology. The antidote to such division is unity and wholeness, which means feeling at home again in the world.

At least in a race you have mile markers and know how long you have to go. Labor is like running as hard as you can without knowing where the finish line is.

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.

Love labor: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayest for physic. It is wholesome for thy body and good for thy mind.

The late Estee Lauder says you can never wear white shoes after Labor Day. But of course, in today's world, that does not exist.

Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture.