Popular quotes about Work! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries. And there's no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes.
Wislawa SzymborskaWork Does Not Need You, You Need Work. Through Work, Destiny Unfolds. Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
Chin-Ning ChuWe 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.
Melissa Gira GrantWork, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in order that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become miserable. Such is the inexorable law of capitalist production.
Paul Lafargue[...] 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.
Frederick DouglassIf your educe sculpture to the flat plane of the temporal experience of the work. (...) the experience of the work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides. Apart from that condition, any experience of the work is a deception.
Richard SerraMy process of working is not really that unique. I like to paint during the day, and block out large chunks of time with which to work. I prefer to work on a painting in a few swift passes, and not fuss over it. I think that the work needs to have an energy to it that can't be accomplished if one is adding a few strokes everyday. Once a piece is done, I don't work on it anymore. I hate fussy.
Rosson CrowNo, 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.
Joey KingSign your work...If you're not proud of it, don't ship it. If you are, sign your work and own the results. We'll know who to thank. If you work for a place where work goes unsigned (internally, in particular) it's worth asking why.
Seth GodinWanting to work is a luxury; having to work is not. If you're an artist, an actor, and you don't have to work, then you do work that you wanna do.
Steve GuttenbergMy 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.
Stewart D. Friedmanit's immoral to work to make money. There's something unlucky in it. You got to work for the work. You got to work on a farm, for the farm - then it makes money.
Christina SteadMaking money has always been pretty easy for me, but today I don't need any more money. I still work, because money is important, but my work is more important than the money, now. And that's a very big difference. I just work because I enjoy my work.
Robert KiyosakiTaking 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.
Robert Anton WilsonValue investing doesn't always work. The market doesn't always agree with you. Over time, value is roughly the way the market prices stocks, but over the short term, which sometimes can be as long as two or three years, there are periods when it doesn't work. And that is a very good thing. The fact that our value approach doesn't work over periods of time is precisely the reason why it continues to work over the long term.
Joel GreenblattOriginally, I wanted to do humanitarian work. I actually feel that getting into acting, which fate has led me to, is my window and path into humanitarian work. I always said I want to do something important. And I feel this work is what's helping me get there.
Evangeline LillyI like to work when I'm not working - do something that may not be considered work, but to me it's work. Getting exercise by going to the grocery store.
Andy WarholTake courage and work on. Patience and steady work - this is the only way. Go on; remember - patience and purity and courage and steady work. . . . So long as you are pure, and true to your principles, you will never fail.
Swami VivekanandaIt's the first time in the history of the world that creatives are also distributors. And that's very profound if you think that up until the recent history, permission was required for us to be able to share work at any sort of scale. We had to get permission from galleries, from ad agencies or photo editors to be able to have our work out there. And now anybody with access to a computer can show their work in 200 countries around the world.
Chase JarvisArt schools are partly the villain here. (Never mind that I teach in them.) This generation of artists is the first to have been so widely credentialed, and its young members so fetishize the work beloved by their teachers that their work ceases to talk about anything else. Instead of enlarging our view of being human, it contains safe rehashing of received ideas about received ideas. This is a melancholy romance with artistic ruins, homesickness for a bygone era. This yearning may be earnest, but it stunts their work, and by turn the broader culture.
Jerry SaltzSo there is a personal sense of style for a given work - I don't like a general style, but every work has its own style, and I want to create a style for every work.
Karlheinz StockhausenBut who does not see that the work goes beyond the one who created it? It marches before him and he will never again be able to catch up with it, it soon leaves his orbit, it will soon belong to another, since he, more quickly than his work, changes and becomes deformed, since before his work dies, he dies.
Michel SeuphorIt's been a straight strip, I must tell you, I've enjoyed it all the way. If I'm saying things to make it sound like it's hard, hard work, it's not. It's beautiful work. It's fun work. It's everything you'd ever want to do.
Aaron SpellingI like to make sculpture because it makes my life social. When I make drawings, I work alone. When I work with sculpture I have someone I can work with.
Camille HenrotI believe the teacher's work is largely negative, that it is largely a matter of saying, "This doesn't work because ..." or "This does work because ..." The because is very important. The teacher can help you understand the nature of your medium, and he can guide you in your reading.
Flannery O'ConnorWhat we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years.
Stephen LeacockI assured the prime minister, my administration will work hard to lay the foundation of peace in the Middle - to work with our nations in the Middle East, give peace a chance. Secondly, I told him that our nation will not try to force peace, that we'll facilitate peace and that we will work with those responsible for a peace.
George W. BushAnybody who tells you that being married and having kids is a walk in the park - it's a beautiful thing. It's the best thing I've ever done in my life - but it's definitely work. You have to work at it like you do anything else you care about in life. It takes commitment and it takes work, and that's all part of it, but in the end there's nothing more worthwhile than working on your family. It's just the best thing in the world.
Nick LacheyJust try to be yourself and resist complacency and ignorance. All you can do is work, work; work and be disciplined.
Raoul PeckI only do children's films now! I think when you go to LA some people feel you've defected a little bit and that's not really the case. Ideally, I would love to work here and to work in America. That's in an ideal world. In fact, I came back to Britain recently to do an ITV1 drama that will be out in April for a couple of months! But I'm flying back to LA to do a pilot season. So, to work in both places is great.
Ashley Jensen...people like to say things like 'all work is prostitution'. Most work is exploitation, but most work is not prostitution. Prostitution is prostitution, a very specific sort of exploitation... And while I am doing literal corrections to flippant turns of phrase, the earth doesn't get raped. It gets mined and poisoned and blown up and depleted, it gets ruined, but it doesn't get raped.
Michelle TeaI have often thought that my work with wildlife taught me the meaning of patience, and my work with the big trees taught me the meaning of humility, and my work with the ice has taught me the meaning of mortality.
James BalogSometimes it's a struggle to make everything work. I usually work on music from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon. Then there are the family activities. Then I work again at night - from nine to as late as two.
Hans-Peter LindstrรธmSo it sort of dawned on me that you have to build into your work the fact that it's going to be shown in different kinds of places and different kinds of light. And the fact that the surroundings and where you're going to be shown is always changing, so that should really not affect the meaning of the work. It should be part of what the work is about.
Robert BarryToday 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.
Pope FrancisIn the Leach Pottery we did most of our work on the wheel. [Bernard] Leach did a little work in the studio, which was press-molded forms, plastic clay pressed into plaster forms to make small rectangular boxes and some vase forms, which he liked to make. These were molds which had been made to an original that he had modeled in solid clay, and during our work there, sometimes I would be pressing these forms as a means of production.
Warren MacKenzieAnd all knowledge is vain save when there is work, and all work is empty save when there is love; and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
Khalil GibranI spent a month in India and where I learnt an important word for me, for everything that had come before and after, and the was the word 'seva' - the work you do without wanting reward, simply for the work itself, for the spiritual, for the practice and the experience it gives you by doing that work. I began to realise it was something I was searching for all my life, that I was doing theatre not for myself but for something for a search, for a seeking for something that is behind that, to find a truth somewhere about us.
George OgilvieWhen I was married, I didn't work. When I had my children, I didn't work. But before that, I'd work for Diana Vreeland at 'Harper's Bazaar.'
Lee RadziwillYou move on. It's work. Yeah, I'm privileged and paid handsomely and it's not exactly being in a coal mine, but you still work your ass off and you work as hard as you possibly can and you hope that people connect to it and enjoy it.
Colin FarrellIf I read a script and the subject stays with me - then that's when I want to go to work. Before, I was very addicted to being on set, and I was doing three or four movies a year for many years. Now, fortunately, I can go to work only when I am passionate about a project, and the rest of the time, I can live my life. I'm not interested in doing movies just as a marathon. When I go to work now, I have much more to give. But the other way, you get empty.
Penelope CruzWe are being tough in saying it is a duty on the unemployed in future not only to be available for work - and not to shirk work - but also to get the skills for work. That is a new duty we are introducing.
Gordon BrownI don't think I could ever stop doing serious movies and just do comedies, or vice versa, but there is something cool about going to work everyday and you're just trying to make your friends laugh. That's nice work if you can get it, you know what I mean? It's different than going to work and knowing that I've gotta slap someone in the face today, and then I've gotta cry, and someone's gonna die, I've gotta get myself to that place.
John C. ReillyI'm a character actress, plain and simple... Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.
Frances McDormandBut I must work on in full calmness and serenity... The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feeling. So this work is the aim-and through concentration upon that one idea, everything one does is simplified. Now the work goes slowly-a reason the more to lose no time.
Vincent Van GoghMy 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.
Abraham LincolnCooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar.
Anthony Bourdain