Quotes About Work

I say to hell with the work you have to do to earn a living! That kind of work does us no honor; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs who exploit us. But the work you do because you like to do it, because you've heard the call, you've got a vocation - that's ennobling! We should all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno - I don't work. And I don't care if they hang me, I won't work! Yet I'm alive! I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it!

If you work for a man, in heavens name work for him! If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents. I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.

Most people only work enough so that it feels like work, whereas successful people work at a pace that gets such satisfying results that work is a reward. Truly successful people don’t even call it work; for them, it’s a passion. Why? Because they do enough to win!

We aren't defined by our work. People think if you over-identify with your work, then that must mean you're giving over too much of yourself to it, that there's something wrong with that. We're trained to believe in things like work-life balance. So much work is tending towards service. It's very much about creating experiences rather than products, and it makes those boundaries between life and work very slippery.

I never want to retire until the day I drop dead. I want to work and work and work because work, I don't do for money, I do for love. And I love to work.

[...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.

At least 90 percent of my work is in situ. For me, it's not only to work with the architecture and space, it's also to work with the time, to work with the people who are involved with the place. It's also dealing with history. It takes all this into account. Other works can be placed in different environments, but they always follow a rule. This is usually not the case for work in situ, because even if they are transported, they remain there forever or they are destroyed.

To the young: Work, work, work, and then work some more!

There is honor in all work, in all tasks, but take it one step further. Make what you do a labor of love. Then your work will truly touch and change the world in the way you desire. The work you do, whatever your chosen field, will be work that heals.

No, I like normal life but I will go crazy if I'm not working. I'll say to my mom, "I'm going crazy! I'm going stir crazy!" I love my house. I love my family. I love my animals. Sometimes, I just want to work whether its on location here in Michigan or back in LA. I just want to work, work, work. It's what I want to do with the rest of my life so, yes, I do go a little bit crazy when I'm not working.

Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.

Work cure is the best of all psychotherapy, in my opinion.... As well might we expect a patient to recover without food as to recover without work.... The sound man needs work to keep him sound, but the nervous invalid has an even greater need of work to draw him out of his isolation, and to stop the miseries of doubt and self-scrutiny, to win back self-respect and the support of fellowship.

The thing I like so much about short stories is that there isn't as much of an investment of time so I'm free to experiment more. If it doesn't work out, I've only lost a week or two of work. If I screw up a novel I've lost at least a year's worth of work. But the nice thing is that those experiments with short stories can be carried over to novels when the experiments do work.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work a) that you need most to do and b) the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement b).

At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness.

Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.

My research and practice indicates that people need to be doing work they love and to love the work they do. They need to feel that their efforts matter for the people and causes about which they really care. Further, they need to be doing work with people they respect and enjoy. Finally, they need to feel free to choose where, when and how it all gets done. It's not easy to put these conditions in place, but it is certainly possible to do so, as I have seen and shown in my work in organizations and communities using the Total Leadership approach.

Leisure is non-work for the sake of work. Leisure is the time spent recovering from work and in the frenzied but hopeless attempt to forget about work.

I'm in love with Earth. I truly am. And so listening is not work, to work toward a better future. It's joy. To not be able to work toward a better future would be work. That would be tough.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

This world is not for cowards. Do not try to fly. Look not for success or failure. Join yourself to the perfectly unselfish will and work on. Know that the mind which is born to succeed joins itself to a determined will and perseveres. You have the right to work, but do not become so degenerate as to look for results. Work incessantly, but see something behind the work. Even good deeds can find a man in great bondage. Therefore be not bound by good deeds or by desire for name and fame. Those who know this secret pass beyond this round of birth and death and become immortal.

Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence.

After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex. Of course, for some people it isn't work because they need the exercise and they've got the energy for the sex and the sex gives them even more energy. Some people get energy from sex and some people lose energy from sex. I have found that it's too much work. But if you have the time for it, and if you need that exercise-then you should do it.

Baba dropped the stack of food stamps on her desk. "Thank you but I don't want," Baba said. "I work always. In Afghanistan I work, in America I work. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dobbins, but I don't like it free money."...Baba walked out of the welfare office like a man cured of a tumor.

The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.

If we do not live where we work and when we work we are wasting our lives and our work too.

When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.

Work is external to the worker. . . . It is not part of his nature; consequently he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself. . . . The worker therefore feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless.

Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.

Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

We talked, she and I. She asked about my work and it was a pretense, she was not interested in my work. And when I answered, it was a pretense. I was not interested in my work either. There was only one thing that interested us, and she knew it. She had made it plain by her coming.

When you want a thing deeply, earnestly and intensely, this feeling of desire reinforces your will and arouses in you the determination to work for the desired object. When you have a distinct purpose in view, your work becomes of absorbing interest. You bend your best powers to it; you give it concentrated attention; you think of little else than the realization of this purpose; your will is stimulated into unusual activity, and as a consequence you do your work with an increasing sense of power.

Our point of view is, lets not be so elitist that we can't honor good, hard, dignified, ennobling work: people working with their hands, building things, putting up solar panels, weatherizing homes, working on organic agriculture, building wind farms. We don't have robots in society, so somebody has to do that work. Lets make sure that the people who can use that work get a chance to do it. I see that as a first step toward bigger and better things.

You have as great an opportunity for satisfaction in the performance of your duty as I do in mine. The progress of this work will be determined by our joint efforts. Whatever your calling, it is as fraught with the same kind of opportunity to accomplish good as is mine. What is really important is that this is the work of the Master. Our work is to go about doing good as did He.

We think of prayer as a preparation for work, or a calm after having done work, whereas prayer is the essential work.

We dream of having a clean house - but who dreams of actually doing the cleaning? We don't have to dream about doing the work, because doing the work is always within our grasp; the dream, in this sense, is to attain the goal without the work.

Today is [the feast of] Santa Rita, Patron Saint of impossible things - but this seems impossible: let us ask of her this grace, this grace that all, all, all people would do good and that we would encounter one another in this work, which is a work of creation, like the creation of the Father. A work of the family, because we are all children of God, all of us, all of us! And God loves us, all of us! May Santa Rita grant us this grace, which seems almost impossible. Amen.

You don't fully understand the meaning of a work until the audience responds to it. Because the audience completes the circle, and adds a whole other shade of meaning. Whenever you view something, and this is why great works of art survive decades and centuries, is because there's a door within the work that allows the audience to walk through and complete the meaning of the work. An audience isn't passive, nor are they unintelligent.

Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.

When something you make doesn't work, it didn't work, not you. You, you work. You keep trying.

The elephant in the room time and time again when it comes to work and promotions is maternity leave. We need to work with businesses so they work with women and make it easy and supportive for them to come back into the workplace.

A work of art is a work of order, and if the artist is to put the stamp of his own mind on his work, he must arrange, modify, and dispose of his materials so that they may appear in a more agreeable and beautiful manner than they would have assumed without his interference.

The REAL American Dream is not about a garage full of new cars, winning the lottery, or retiring to a life of ease in Florida. It's about doing work that has meaning, work that makes a difference, and doing that work with people you care about.

Now you are deep in what seems to me a peculiarly selfless service. The spiritual training of children must be that. You work for the years you will not see. You work for the Invisible all the time, but you work for the Eternal. So it is all worthwhile.

Lots of people have asked me what Gracie and I did to make our marriage work. It's simple - we don't do anything. I think the trouble with a lot of people is that they work too hard at staying married. They make a business out of it. When you work too hard at a business you get tired; and when you get tired you get grouchy; and when you get grouchy you start fighting; and when you start fighting you're out of business.

I look at some of my work and say, "Oh, that's where I can be better." I want to continue to grow and do things that do scare me. I want to work with filmmakers who will help me go deeper in my work.

My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.

Most development doesn't make it to series. So you want the writer and director to have a really good experience with development because, if it doesn't work out, you want to work with them again. You have to know their work really well, know the drafts really well, and when you give notes, you need to have really thought them through.