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.

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

We are coming to see that there should be no stifling of labor by capital, or of capital by labor; and also that there should be no stifling of labor by labor, or of capital by capital.

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.

Work is a means; it is not an end. And for any tasks that can be performed or eliminated by a capital instrument, human labor is not the best means... Furthermore, we have science, engineering and management - the three disciplines - that really plan and control the production of goods and services, trying to eliminate labor. Who the hell is government to come along and try to create labor? The people who are producing wealth are trying to eliminate toil, while the politicians are trying to create it.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.

Bring on those tired, labor-plagued, competition-weary companies and ESOP will breathe new life into them. They will find ESOP better than Geritol. It will revitalize what is wrong with capitalism. It will increase productivity. It will improve labor relations. It will promote economic justice. It will save the economic system. It will make our form of government and our concept of freedom prevail over those who don't agree with us.

I believe that labor is a blessing. It never was and never will be a curse. It is a blessed thing to labor for . . . the ones you love. It is a blessed thing to have an object in life - something to do - something to call into play your best thoughts, to develop your faculties and to make you a man.

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.

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.

There were stories coming out of Thailand that slave labor was being used to catch and process the seafood we eat. They were nearly all from Miramar. Because of reports of widespread labor abuses, several countries are now considering a ban on imports of Thai seafood.

Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.

Neoliberalism has taken new forms since the demise of the Fordist concept of labor and with the emergence of what is understood as flexible labor. This has really come to be the dominant form for about the last 20 years.

I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

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.

Thus a new way of finding fluidity will inevitably be imposed on management and labor alike. The profit-sharing, or "progress" sharing union contract is the only possible way of satisfying labor and the consumer without saddling industry with fixed costs that in depression periods can kill off marginal companies like flies.

What can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command.

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.

The right way is the greatest gratifier of human wishes ever come upon - when allowed to operate. It is as morally sound as the Golden Rule. It is the way of willing exchange, of common consent, of self-responsibility, of open opportunity. It respects the right of each to the product of his labor. It limits the police force to keeping the peace. It is the way of the free market, private property, limited government. On its banner is emblazoned Individual Liberty.

Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.

Readers soon tire of prefaces, and skip them, and so the labor of writing them is lost.

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.

Property, the right to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, the right to work, to develop, to exercise one's faculties, according to one's own understanding, without the state intervening otherwise than by its protective action; this is what is meant by liberty

The danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of getting stuck doing the music. When I make an album, I write music, I write lyrics, I come up with the visual design, etc. I get to do all of that stuff.

If you use a poor headline, it does not matter how hard you labor over your copy because your copy will not be read.

Labor is life; thought is light.

[T]he State . . . gives idle capital the power of increase, and, through interest, rent, profit, and taxes, robs industrious labor of its products.

The labor movement must be destroyed.

On occassion, slaves in Spanish New Orleans owned slaves, whose labor they could appropriate toward purchasing their own freedom, or whose ownership they could trade as a partial payment on their own freedom.

Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.

The trade agreement itself does have labor and environmental protections, but we have to stand for human rights and we have to make sure that violence isn't being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights.

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.

I felt very maternal around eight months. And I thought I couldn't become any more until I saw the baby... But it happened during my labor because I had a very strong connection with my child. I felt like when I was having contractions, I envisioned my child pushing through a very heavy door. And I imagined this tiny infant doing all the work, so I couldn't think about my own pain... We were talking. I know it sounds crazy, but I felt a communication.

Fossil energy is the worst discovery man ever made, and his disruption of the carbon-oxygen cycle is the greatest of his triumphs over nature. Through thinner and thinner air we labor toward our last end, conquerors finally of even the earth chemistry that created us.

The amazing heroic women in labor, they are the truest inspiration, and when they push their babies into the light... I am astonished every time.

The distance between capital and labor is not a great gulf over which is swung a Niagara suspension bridge; it is only a step, and the laborers here will cross over and become capitalists and the capitalists will cross over and become laborers. Would to God they would shake hands while they are crossing, these from one side, and those from the other side.

For women in my lifetime things have changed quite a bit, but not enough. They have only changed for women that have education and access to health care in the Western world. But look at the rest of the world. Still in many places, women are sold into premature marriages, prostitution, forced labor; they are forced to have children that they cannot support or that they don't want. They are abused, tortured, exploited and even killed with impunity.

For mothers who must earn, there is indeed no leisure time problem. The long hours of earning are increased by the hours of domestic labor, until no slightest margin for relaxation or change of thought remains.

Most of cooking is the labor of chopping. Give yourself a break. Pretend you're on a cooking show and have all your ingredients lined up for you.

The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.

People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time-even when hard at work.

In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage.

We will only keep people from fleeing the countryside into urban favelas, villas miseries, shantytowns and squatter villages when the productivity gap is closed between what brute labor on the soil can accomplish and what advanced technology makes possible today - and will make possible tomorrow.

Free markets. What does this system mean? The answer is simple: it is the market economy, it is the system in which the cooperation of individuals in the social division of labor is achieved by the market.

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

Tom Perez is really bringing in the labor aspect of the Democratic Party, a group of voters that need to get back, also Latinos. You know, he is the first Latino DNC chair in the history of Democratic Party, a growing demographic that really over performed last time.