Quotes about Labor

You may cure yourself of a depression by forcing yourself to perform, in rapid order and with excruciating concentration, half a dozen or so unpleasant chores, especially if they have long been postponed. This is a kind of homeopathic purgative, a treatment of like with like.

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to seat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together.

And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you:
And to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. And be at peace among yourselves.

All slave labor is forced labor. So are all forms of labor where an individual has not got the educational or fiscal means to stand on his own in making a free contract with an employer, or where that capitalist has acquired the political and social as well as the economic clout to prevent evenhanded terms from being respected. What passes for the rational legal concept of a "contract" is unknown in American conditions of fact, for the vast majority of cases: most people hire their own labor out under conditions of duress, and the employer one-sidedly dictates the terms. That is how we got to a condition where the minimum wage for the working poor is not a living wage, and is getting worse and worse. Modernity is not more civilized than antiquity because it has legally abolished slavery; it is merely more modernized in recognizing that it is far, far cheaper and more prudent to rent slaves by the hour than to own them, which means you have to assume responsibility for their upkeep and care.

Men give me some credit for genius.  All the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly.  Day and night it is before me.  I explore it in all its bearings.  My mind becomes pervaded with it.   Then the effort which I make is what the people call the fruit of genius.  It is the fruit of labor and thought.

Among other things, [books by Bruce Doyle III and Mike Hernacki] explain the importance of the "winning attitude" I have been urged to adopt: a positive attitude "attracts" or "fulfils", depending on which author's weird science you go with, postiive results, with little or no action on your part required. Herein, too, lies the answer to the question I once posed ...: would it be enough just to fake a winning attitude? No way, according to Doyle:

'People who just pretend to have a positive attitude may be more acceptable, but they will still attract according to how they are really vibrating-- the energy they are emanating will attract their circumstances.'

The obvious liberal rejoinders come to mind: What about the child whose home is hit by a bomb? Did she have some bomb-shaped thoughtform that brought ruin down on her head? And did my [fired white-collar workers] boot-camp mates cause the layoffs that drove them out of their jobs by "vibrating" at a layoff-related frequency? It seems inexcusably cruel to tell people  who have reach some kind of personal nadir that their probem is entirely of their own making. ...

But from the point of view of the economic 'winners'-- those who occupy powerful and high-paying jobs-- the view that one's fate depends entirely on oneself must be remarkably convenient. It explains the winners' success in the most flattering terms while invalidating the complaints of the losers. Patrick's clients, for example, came to the boot camp prepared to blame their predicament on the economy, or the real estate market, or the inhuman corporate demands on their time. But these culprits were summarily dismissed in favor of alleged individual failings:depression, hesitation, lack of focus. It's not the world that needs changing, is the message, it's you. No need then, to band together to work for a saner economy or a a more human-friendly corporate environment, or to band together at all. 

[Networking] feels "fake" because we know it involves the deflection of our natural human sociability to an ulterior end. Normally we meet strangers in the expectation that they may truly be strange, and are drawn to the multilayered mystery that each human presents. But in networking, as in prostitution, there is no time for fascination. The networker is always looking over the shoulder of the person she engages in conversation, toward whatever concrete advantage can be gleaned from the interaction-- a tip or a precious contact. This instrumentalism undermines the possibility of a group identity, say, as white-collar victims of corporate upheaval. No matter how crowded the room, the networker prowls alone, scavenging to meet his or her individual needs.  

Career coaches can perhaps be forgiven for using baseless personality tests [Myers-Briggs, Enneagrams, etc] to add a veneer of scientific respectability to the coaching process. But the tests enjoy wide credibility, not just among coaches, but among corporate decision makers. .. . So why is the corporate world, which we think of as so fixated on empirical, in fact quantifiable, measures of achievement like the "bottom line", so attached to these meaningless personality tests? One attraction must be that the tests lend a superficial rationality to the matching of people with jobs. ... Of course, if the function of the test is really ideological-- to promote the peg-in-hole theory of employment-- they do not have to be in any way accurate of predictors of performance of satisfaction. They serve more as underpinnings of corporate etiquette, allowing employers to rationalize rejection or dismissal in terms of an inadequate "fit". We believe that there is a unique slot for each person, the tests announce-- even though we may fail to find it in your particular case.

"Frying-Pan Jack and I were in that camp, that's where he said to me, he'd been tramping since 1927, 'I told myself in '27,  if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labor, I will henceforth cease to work.' You don't have to go to college to figure these things out, no sir. He said, 'I learned when I was young that the only true life I had was the life of my brain. But if it's true that the only real life I had was the life of my  brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to someone for eight hours a day,  for their particular use, on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!'"

Don't Mourn--Organize!

There is no labor a person does that is undignified;  if they do it right.

The day is short, the task is great, the laborers are lazy, the wage is abundant and the master is urgent.

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ...and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

An unreflective passion for social justice may be one of the biggest obstacles to creating peace and prosperity in the 21^st century. While there are most certainly factory owners in China whom we would rightly regard as criminal in their treatment of their workers, it is very important not to confuse these incidents with the phenomenon of globalization. It is a good thing that Wal-Mart is encouraging more humane standards in its supplier's factories. And yet it is also important to remember that Wal-Mart's "vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market" is a vast pipeline of prosperity for the hundreds of millions of rural Chinese whose lives are more difficult than we can imagine.

Much of the criticism of economic globalization has centered on factory labor abuses. But the majority of the world's poor are not employed in factories; they are self-employed -- as peasant farmers, rural peddlers, urban hawkers, and small producers, usually involved in agriculture and small trade in the world's vast "informal" economy ("informal" because economists have difficulty measuring it.).

The work of a person laboring in some humble occupation is no less relevant to the well-being of society than that of, for example, a doctor, a teacher, a monk, or a nun. All human endeavor is potentially great and noble. So long as we carry out our work with good motivation, thinking, “My work is for others,” it will be of benefit to the wider community. But when concern for others’ feelings and welfare is missing, our activities tend to become spoiled. Through lack of basic human feeling, religion, politics, economics, and so on can be rendered dirty. Instead of serving humanity, they become agents of destruction.

"The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him."

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

He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.

1. A big black bug bit a big brown bear. 2. Bring a bit of buttered brown bran bread. 3. Just which one he wants I don't know. 4. His daughter was going to New York to study law. 5. That's the question that really troubles him. 6. Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 7. Thou wouldst not play false yet wouldst wrongly win. 8. Amidst the mists and coldest frosts, With stoutest wrists and loudest boasts, He hits his fists against the posts, And still insists he sees the ghosts. 9. An Austrian army awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besiege Belgrade; Cossack commanders cannonading come, Deal devastation's dire destructive doom; Ev'ry endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for freedom, fight, fierce, furious fray. Gen'rals 'gainst gen'rals grapple,-gracious God! How honors Heav'n heroic hardihood! Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Just Jesus, instant innocence instill! Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kindred kill. Labor low levels longest, loftiest lines; Men march 'midst mounds, motes, mountains, murd'rous mines. Now noisy, noxious numbers notice nought, Of outward obstacle o'ercoming ought; Poor patriots perish, persecution's pest! Quite quiet Quakers "Quarter, quarter" quest; Reason returns, religion, religion, right, redounds, Suwarrow stop such sanguinary sounds! Truce to thee, Turkey, terror to thy train! Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine! Vanish vile vengeance, vanish victory vain! Why wish we warfare, wherefore welcome won Xerxes, Xantippus, Xavier, Xenophon? Yield, ye young Yaghier yeomen, yield your yell! Zimmerman's, Zoroaster's zeal Again attract; art against arms appeal. All, all ambitious aims, avaunt, away! Et caetera, et caetera, et caeterä.1 10. I am the very model of a model major-general, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical; I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical; About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news- With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse; . . . I'm very good at integral and differential calculus; I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral I'm the very model of a modern major-general.2 1 Anonymous, "Alliteration, or the Siege of Belgrade" Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 2 The Pirates of Penzance

A mule will labor for ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?

To create a little flower is the labor of ages.

I would say to bishops, and to all men in authority, we should have an interest in carrying on this work. We should labor to get the Spirit of God. It is our right, our privilege, and our duty to call upon the Lord, that the vision of our mind may be opened, so that we may see and understand the day and age in which we are living. It is your privilege, and mine too, to know the mind and will of the Lord concerning our duties, and if we fail to seek after this, we neglect to magnify our calling.

Some labor this side of the veil, others on the other side of the veil. If we tarry here we expect to labor in the cause of salvation and if we go hence we expect to continue our work until the coming of the Son of Man. The only difference is, while we are here we are subject to pain and sorrow, while they on the other side are free from affliction of every kind.

Much of the present difficulty in industrial relations arises from the fact that too many employers as well as too many legislators take the Labor Leader more seriously than he deserves to be taken, while taking the ordinary, everyday, middle-of-the-road wage-earner less seriously than he deserves to be taken.

We are American farmers. We are Americans. We are farmers. Our grandsires freed this virgin continent,plowed it from East to West, and gave it to us.This land is for us and for our children tomake richer and more fruitful. We grow foods, fibers - fifteen times asmuch as we use. We grow men and women -- farmers, Presidents, and Senators, generals of industry,captains of commerce, missionaries, builders. Communists would call us capitalists, because we own land and we own tools. Capitalists might choose to call us laborers,because we work with our hands. Others may call us managers, because wedirect men and manage materials. Our children call us "Dad." We are also deacons, stockholders, mechanics, veterinarians, electricians, schoolboard members, Rotarians, voters, scientists,neighbors, men of good will. Our rules are Nature's rules, the laws of God. We command the magic of the seasons andthe miracles of science, because we obey Nature's rules. Our raw materials are soil and seed, animals, the atmosphere and the rain, and the mighty sun. We work with brains. We toil with musclesof steel, fed by the fires of lightning and byoils from the inner earth. We are partners with the laboratory, withthe factory, and with all the people. We provide industry with ever-renewableraw materials from the inexhaustible world ofplants. We buy products from the labor ofevery fellow-citizen.Our efficiencies have raised great cities andhappy towns, and have given all the peoplemeat and bread. We believe in work and in honor We believe in freedom. We are grateful for the American freedomthat has let us earn so many blessings. We know that liberty is our most preciouspossession. At the ballot-boxes and on thebattlefield we shall defend it. We have proven a new pattern of abun-dance. We pray that we may also help tomake a pattern for peace.