Quotes about employment

A collection of quotes on the topic of employer, employment, work, working.

Quotes about employment

“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

“If anything was really possible or easy to achieve, then we would all end up as employers rather than employees. Kings and not subjects. Rich and not poor.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognises the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State

Support, Country

“People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship, and if that happened, then they wouldn't be prey to the employers who say, 'We want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Interview, MSNBC, UNKNOWN DATE

People

“The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never interfere in his private life or his citizenship. He is tied to the company through a voluntary and cancellable employment contract, not through some mystical or indissoluble bond.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 387

Life, Fate, Family, Religion

“Employment is a good source of start up capital and basic survival but never a direct path to long term reasonable prosperity.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

2018

“Few have the mindset of employers when many are willing to stay employed for life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“The use of method as the criterion of science abolishes theoretical relevance. As a consequence, all propositions concerning facts will be promoted to the dignity of science, regardless of their relevance, as long as they result from a correct use of method. Since the ocean of facts is infinite, a prodigious expansion of science in the sociological sense becomes possible, giving employment to scientistic technicians and leading to the fantastic accumulation of irrelevant knowledge through huge “research projects” whose most interesting features is the quantifiable expense that has gone into their production.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Source: The New Science of Politics: An Introduction

Knowledge, Sense, Science

“In a country where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation. The old principle: 'who does not work shall not eat,' has been replaced with a new one: 'who does not obey shall not eat.”

Leon Trotsky book The Revolution Betrayed

Source: The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Ch. 11

Death, Country

“The central idea is that government fiscal policy, its spending and taxing, its borrowing and repayment of loans, its issue of new money and withdrawal of money, shall be undertaken with an eye only to the results of these actions on the economy and not to any established traditional doctrine what is sound and what is unsound …Government should adjust its rates of expenditure and taxation such that total spending is neither more or less than that which is sufficient to purchase the full employment level of output at current prices. If this means there is deficit, greater borrowing, "printing money," etc., then these things in themselves are neither good or bad, they are simply the means to the desired ends of full employment and price stability.”

Abba Lerner (1903–1982) American economist

On Functional Finance: (1943, pg.354) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174849

Money, Idea

“I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment.”

Sam Walton (1918–1992) Founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

Attributed in Adam L. Penenberg, "Why Google Is Like Wal-Mart" https://archive.is/20130630165550/www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/04/67287?currentPage=all, Wired, 21 April 2005

Success

“In order to touch the heart and gain the confidence, the assent, the adhesion, and the co-operation of the illiterate legions of the proletariat — and the vast majority of proletarians unfortunately still belong in this category — it is necessary to begin to speak to those workers not of the general sufferings of the international proletariat as a whole but of their particular, daily, altogether private misfortunes. It is necessary to speak to them of their own trade and the conditions of their work in the specific locality where they live; of the harsh conditions and long hours of their daily work, of the small pay, the meanness of their employer, the high cost of living, and how impossible it is for them properly to support and bring up a family.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)

Family, Confidence, Support, Suffering

“Let every man abide in the art or employment wherein he was called. And for their labor they may receive all necessary things, except money. … Let none of the brothers, wherever he may be or whithersoever he may go, carry or receive money or coin in any manner, or cause it to be received, either for clothing, or for books, or as the price of any labor, or indeed for any reason, except on account of the manifest necessity of the sick brothers. For we ought not to have more use and esteem of money and coin than of stones. And the devil seeks to blind those who desire or value it more than stones. Let us therefore take care lest after having left all things we lose the kingdom of heaven for such a trifle. And if we should chance to find money in any place, let us no more regard it than the dust we tread under our feet.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

First Rule of the Friars Minor

Money, Books, Art, Chance

“The employment of mathematical symbols is perfectly natural when the relations between magnitudes are under discussion; and even if they are not rigorously necessary, it would hardly be reasonable to reject them, because they are not equally familiar to all readers and because they have sometimes been wrongly used, if they are able to facilitate the exposition of problems, to render it more concise, to open the way to more extended developments, and to avoid the digressions of vague argumentation.”

Antoine Augustin Cournot Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth

Source: Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth, 1897, pp. 3-4; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 199)

Way, Mathematics, Nature, Problem

“The environment around us is constantly changing, including innovations, friends, employment and moving to a different location; those who accept and excel at adaptation have smoother transitions, while others struggle.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2016

Change

“God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the place where He wishes us to be employed; and that employment is truly "our Father's business."”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves, or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves.

P. 123
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Business, God

“Imagine that one not very fine day two or three of your states in the Southwest, in the space of 24 hours, declare themselves independent of the U.S.... declare themselves a fully sovereign nation, decreeing that Spanish will be the only language. All English-speaking residents, even if their ancestors have lived there for 200 years, have to take a test in the Spanish language within one or two years and swear allegiance to the new nation. Otherwise they will not receive citizenship and be deprived of civic, property and employment rights. What would be the reaction of the United States? I have no doubt that it would be immediate military intervention. Today Russia faces precisely this scenario.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the New Russia and Ukraine (May 1994)

Imagination

“Employment is Nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness.”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Latter day attributions
Source: Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, (1884), p. 223.

Nature, Happiness

“Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

The Civil War in France : "The Third Address" (May 1871) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

People, Search, Communication, Business

“The refusal to allow a multiply-disadvantaged class to represent others who may be singularly-disadvantaged defeats efforts to restructure the distribution of opportunity and limits remedial relief to minor adjustments within an established hierarchy. Consequently, “bottom-up” approaches, those which combine all discriminatees in order to challenge an entire employment system, are foreclosed by the limited view of the wrong and the narrow scope of the available remedy. If such “bottom-up” intersectional representation were routinely permitted, employees might accept the possibility that there is more to gain by collectively challenging the hierarchy rather than by each discriminatee individually seeking to protect her source of privilege within the hierarchy. But as long as antidiscrimination doctrine proceeds from the premise that employment systems need only minor adjustments, opportunities for advancement by disadvantaged employees will be limited. Relatively privileged employ- ees probably are better off guarding their advantage while jockeying against others to gain more. As a result, Black women — the class of employees which, because of its intersectionality, is best able to challenge all forms of discrimination — are essentially isolated and often required to fend for themselves.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Women, Effort

“Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations; most computer users have found that they now need more, and more expensive clerks, even though they call them "operators" or "programmers.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Drucker cited in: William White (1981) Library journal. Volume 106, Nr 1-12. p. 1048
1960s - 1980s

“The doctor begins to lose freedom.... First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren’t equally divided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can't live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go.... All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won't decide, when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine (1961 LP)
1960s

School, Freedom, Waiting

“The average American citizen should have presented to him in a simple and easily comprehended form the truth about the business affairs that affect his daily life as consumer, employee, employer, as investor, as voter. […] There are concrete instances of unfair competition that can be reached under the Federal criminal legislation, and they should be attacked and destroyed in the courts. But the laws should be such that normally, and save in extraordinary, circumstances, there should be no need of recourse to the courts. What is needed is administrative supervision and control. This should be so exercised that the highways of commerce and opportunity should be open to all; and not nominally open, but really open, a consistent effort being made to deprive every man of any advantage that is not due to his own superiority and efficiency, controlled by moral purpose. […] Not only as a matter of justice and honesty, but as a matter of prime popular interest, we should see that this control is so exercised as to favor a proper return to the upright business manager and honest investor.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Life, Truth, Justice, Law

“According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)

Life, Money, Disease, Law

“That a deep-rooted feeling of discontent pervades the masses, none can deny; that there is a just cause for it, must be admitted. The old cry, “These agitators are stirring up a feeling of dissatisfaction among working men and they should be suppressed,” will not avail now. Every thinking person knows that the agitator did not throw two millions of men out of employment. The man that reads such paragraphs as this will not lay the blame of it at the door of the agitator:
“Mrs. Sarah Jane Geary, an Englishwoman, residing in this city, committed suicide a few days since. Her husband is a miner, and, owing to the frequent suspensions of business in the mines during the past winter, his meager earnings were insufficient to support the family. The fact preyed on Mrs. Geary’s mind, and she resolved to end her life, that her children might receive her share of the food, otherwise they would go hungry.””

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

"The Army of the Discontented," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Army%20of%20the%20Discontented;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0381;idno=nora0140-4;node=nora0140-4%3A8 North American Review, vol. 140, whole no. 341 (April 1885), p. 371.

Life, Men, Children, Family

“The most employment-intensive industry in the world is retail and our next generation needs these jobs. India has a strategy for the next generation of doctors, engineers and biotech graduates, etc. But for the country as a whole, what we need to resolve is how to create sensible jobs for undergraduates and or those even less educated”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on retail and SEZ plans

World, Education, Country

“The gospel freely admitted makes a man happy. It gives him peace with God, and makes him happy in God. It gives to industry a noble, contented look which selfish drudgery never wore; and from the moment that a man begins to do his work for his Saviour's sake, he feels that the most ordinary employments are full of sweetness and dignity, and that the most difficult are not impossible. And if any of you, my friends, is weary with his work, if dissatisfaction with yourself or sorrow of any kind disheartens you, if at any time you feel the dull paralysis of conscious sin, or the depressing influence of vexing thoughts, look to Jesus, and be happy. Be happy, and your joyful work will prosper well.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 368.

God, Peace, Feeling, Time

“Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shop owners and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the “Homestead Act” that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, property-owning citizens-a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine.
I know we have with us today employee-owners from La Perla Plantation in Guatemala. They have a stake in the place where they work and a stake in the freedom of their country. When Communist guerrillas came, these proud owners protected what belonged to them. They drove the Communists off their land and I know you join me in saluting their courage.
In this century, the United States has evolved into a great industrial power. Even though they are now, by and large, employees, our working people still benefit from property ownership. Most of our citizens own the homes in which they reside. In the marketplace, they benefit from direct and indirect business ownership. There are currently close to 10 million self-employed workers in the U. S.-nearly 9 percent of total civilian employment. And, millions more hope to own a business some day. Furthermore, over 47 million individuals reap the rewards of free enterprise through stock ownership in the vast number of companies listed on U. S. stock exchanges.
I can’t help but believe that in the future we will see in the United States and throughout the western world an increasing trend toward the next logical step, employee ownership. It is a path that befits a free people.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech on Project Economic Justice http://www.cesj.org/about-cesj-in-brief/history-accomplishments/pres-reagans-speech-on-project-economic-justice/ (The White House, 3 August 1987) 1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

People, World, Law, Dreams

“I quite understand the principle of confining employment as far as possible to the British without regard for efficiency. I think, however, that the Ministry is not applying the principle sufficiently widely. I know many Englishmen who have married foreigners, and many English potential wives who are out of a job. Would not a year be long enough to train an English wife to replace the existing foreign one in such cases?”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Enclosed reply to the Ministry of Labour, in defense of A. S. Neill (who declined to send it), 27 January, 1931
1930s

Understanding, Thinking, Training

“When I began the following Work, my only object was to extend and explain more fully the Memoir which I read at the public meeting of the Academy of Sciences in the month of April 1787, on the necessity of reforming and completing the Nomenclature of Chemistry. While engaged in this employment, I perceived, better than I had ever done before, the justice of the following maxims of the Abbé de Condillac, in his System of Logic, and some other of his works. "We think only through the medium of words.—Languages are true analytical methods.—Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method.—The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged."”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

Source: Elements of Chemistry (1790), p.xiii

Justice, Art, Thinking, Science

“We know today that nothing will restore the pre-machine condition of reasonably universal employment save an artificial allocation of working hours involving the use of more men than formerly to perform a given task.... The primary function of society, in spite of all the sophistries spurred of selfishness, is to give men better conditions than they could get without it; and the basic need today is jobs for all—not for "property" for a few of the luck and the acquisitive.... In view of the urgent need for change, there is something almost obscene in the chatter of the selfish about various psychological evils allegedly inherent in a New Deal promising decent economic security and humane leisure for all instead of for a few.... What is worth answering is the kindred outcry about "regimentation", "collective slavery", "violation of Anglo-Saxon freedom", "destruction of the right of the individual to make his own way" and so on; with liberal references to Stalin, Hitler, Mustapha Kemal, and other extremist dictators who have sought to control men's personal, intellectual, and artistic lives, and traditional habits and folkways, as well as their economic fortunes. Naturally the Anglo-Saxon balks at any programme calculated to limit his freedom as a man and a thinker or to disturb his inherited perspectives and daily customs—and need we say that no plan ever proposed in an Anglo-Saxon country would conceivably seek to limit such freedom or disturb such perspectives and customs? Here we have a deliberate smoke-screen—conscious and malicious confusion of terms. A decent planned society would indeed vary to some extent the existing regulations (for there are such) governing commercial and economic life. Yet who save a self-confessed Philistine or Marxist (the plutocrat can cite "Das Kapital" for his purpose!) would claim that the details and conditions of our merely economic activities form more than a trivial fraction of our whole lives and personalities? That which is essential and distinctive about a man is not the routine of material struggle he follows in his office; but the civilised way he lives, outside his office, the life whose maintenance is the object of his struggle. So long as his office work gains him a decently abundant and undisputedly free life, it matters little what that work is—what the ownership of the enterprise, and what and how distributed its profits, if profits there be. We have seen that no system proposes to deny skill and diligence an adequate remuneration. What more may skill and diligence legitimately ask? Nor is any lessening in the pride of achievement contemplated. Man will thrill just as much at the overcoming of vast obstacles, and the construction of great works, whether his deeds be performed for service or for profit. As it is, the greatest human achievements have never been for profit. Would Keats or Newton or Lucretius or Einstein or Santayana flourish less under a rationally planned society? Any intimation that a man's life is wholly his industrial life, and that a planned economic order means a suppression of his personality, is really both a piece of crass ignorance and an insult to human nature. Incidentally, it is curious that no one has yet pointed to the drastically regulated economic life of the early Mass. Bay colony as something "American!"”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Unpublished (and probably unsent) letter to the Providence Journal (13 April 1934), quoted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy, edited by J. T. Joshi, pp. 115-116
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Way, Nature

“Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena.... but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation….”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

System of positive polity (1852)

Mathematics, Question, Nature

“The power of the State may be brought to bear, as it often is in England, through public opinion rather than through the laws. By oratory and the influence of the Press, public opinion is largely created by the State, and a tyrannous public opinion is as great an enemy to liberty as tyrannous laws. If the young man who will not fight finds that he is dismissed from his employment, insulted in the streets, cold-shouldered by his friends, and thrown over with scorn by any woman who may formerly have liked him, he will feel the penalty quite as hard to bear as a death sentence. A free community requires not only legal freedom, but a tolerant public opinion, an absence of that instinctive inquisition into our neighbors' affairs which, under the guise of upholding a high moral standard, enables good people to indulge unconsciously a disposition to cruelty and persecution. Thinking ill of others is not in itself a good reason for thinking well of ourselves. But so long as this is not recognized, and so long as the State can manufacture public opinion, except in the rare cases where it is revolutionary, public opinion must be reckoned as a definite part of the power of the State.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 48-50

Death, People, Law, Penalty

“If Tibetans and Firangis [i. e. foreigners or, in the contemporary context, Englishmen] meet and trade with each other, our ryots and traders will lose their employment and result will not be good.”

Bhimsen Thapa (1775–1839) Mukhtiyar and de facto ruler of Nepal from 1806 to 1837

As quoted in book Thapa Politics in Nepal: With Special Reference to Bhim Sen Thapa, 1806–1839 https://books.google.com.np/books?id=7PP1yElRzIUC&dq=bhimsen+thapa&source=gbs_navlinks_s|

“There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Men, People, Soul, Question

“I would guess that most MIT Ph. D.’s since 1980 might deem themselves not to be “Keynesians.” But they, and modern economists everywhere, do use models like those of Samuelson, Modigliani, Solow, and Tobin. Professor Martin Feldstein, my Harvard neighbor, complained at the 350th Anniversary of Harvard that Keynesians had tried to poison his sophomore mind against saving. Tobin and I on the same panel took this amiss, since both of us since 1955 had been favoring a “neoclassical synthesis,” in which full employment with an austere fiscal budget would add to capital formation in preparation for a coming demographic turnaround.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

New millennium, An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson, 2003

“Now that we're 18 days before the election, Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year. He told folks he was the ideal candidate for the Tea Party, now he's telling folks, "What? Who me?" He's forgetting what his own positions are. And he's betting that you will too. I mean, he's changing up so much and backtrackin' and sidesteppin'. We've gotta name this condition that he's going though. I think it's called Romnesia. That's what it's called. I think that's what he's goin' through. Now, I'm not a medical doctor, but I do wanna go over some of the symptoms with you, because I wanna make sure nobody else catches it.You know, if you say you're for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you'd sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia.If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.If you say you'll protect a woman's right to choose, but you stand up in a primary debate and say that you'd be delighted to sign a law outlying — outlawing that right to choose in all cases — man, you definitely got Romnesia.Now, this extends to other issues. If you say earlier in the year, "I'm gonna give a tax cut to the top 1%", and in a debate you say, "I don't know anything about giving tax cuts to rich folks", you need to get a thermometer, take your temperature, because you've probably got Romnesia.If you say that you're a champion of the coal industry when, while you were governor, you stood in front of a coal plant and said "This plant will kill you" —[audience: Romnesia! ] that's some Romnesia.And if you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you've made over the six years you've been running for President, here's the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions. We can fix you up.. We've got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Campaign rally http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/10/19/remarks-president-campaign-event-fairfax-va, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, 2012

Women, Disease, Law, Support

“The religious zeal which animates priests, leads them to undertake labors and to brave perils which would be far beyond the powers of one in secular employment.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Animals

“Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness.

Men, People, World, Way

“A good many causes tend to make good masters and mistresses quite as rare as good servants…. The large and rapid fortunes by which vulgar and ignorant people become possessed of splendid houses, splendidly furnished, do not, of course, give them the feelings and manners of gentle folks, or in any way really raise them above the servants they employ, who are quite aware of this fact, and that the possession of wealth is literally the only superiority their employers have over them.”

Fanny Kemble (1809–1893) English actress and writer

Further Records, 1848-1883, vol. 1; entry dated February 12, 1874 (1891).

People, Way, Feeling, Housing

“But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 6, pg. 479.
(Buch I) (1867)

“As to pay, Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Acceptance speech after being "elected" by the Continental Congress as commander of the yet-to-be-created Continental Army http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/amrev/contarmy/accepts.html (15 June 1775) 1770s

Happiness

“Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, don't care (I suppose) how many seeds of war are sown; but for the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more."”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Marquis de Chastellux (25 April 1788), published in The Writings of George Washington, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 29, p. 485
1780s

Men, War, Learning, Rage

“We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life by which we surround them. We need comprehensive workman’s compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in book-learning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States. Also, friends, in the interest of the working man himself, we need to set our faces like flint against mob-violence just as against corporate greed; against violence and injustice and lawlessness by wage-workers just as much as against lawless cunning and greed and selfish arrogance of employers.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Life, Women, Men, Books

“I say, then, assuming, as I have given you reason to assume, that the price of wheat, when this system is established, ranges in England at 35s. per quarter, and other grain in proportion, this is not a question of rent, but it is a question of displacing the labour of England that produces corn, in order, on an extensive and even universal scale, to permit the entrance into this country of foreign corn produced by foreign labour. Will that displaced labour find new employment? … But what are the resources of this kind of industry to employ and support the people, supposing the great depression in agricultural produce occur which is feared—that this great revolution, as it has appropriately been called, takes place—that we cease to be an agricultural people—what are the resources that would furnish employment to two-thirds of the subverted agricultural population—in fact, from 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 of people? Assume that the workshop of the world principle is carried into effect—assume that the attempt is made to maintain your system, both financial and domestic, on the resources of the cotton trade—assume that, in spite of hostile tariffs, that already gigantic industry is doubled…you would only find increased employment for 300,000 of your population…What must be the consequence? I think we have pretty good grounds for anticipating social misery and political disaster.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846). 1840s

Hostility, People, World, Fear

“The only way to determine if you are being vampirized is to weigh what you give the person compared to what they give you in return. You may, at times, become annoyed with the obligations put upon you by a loved one, a close friend, or even an employer. But before you label them psychic vampires, you must ask yourself, "What am I getting in return?" If your spouse or lover insists that you call them frequently, but you also require them to account to you for their time spent away from you, you must realize this is a give and take situation. Or, if a friend is in the habit of calling upon you for help at inopportune moments, but you similarly depend upon them to give your immediate needs priority, you must regard it as a fair exchange. If your employer asks you to do a little more than is normally expected of you in your particular position, but will overlook occasional tardiness or will give you time off when you need it, you certainly have no cause for complaint and need not feel he is taking advantage of you.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Love, Way, Feeling, Lovers

“I have given up my studio & torn up my father's portrait, & have not touched a brush for six weeks nor ever will again until I see some prospect of getting back to Europe. I am very anxious to go out west next fall & get some employment, but I have not yet decided where.”

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) American painter and printmaker

Quote from her letter of July, 1871; as quoted in her biography online at https://www.marycassatt.org/biography.html

“The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don’t live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer. […] If we own the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own community, then we’re developing to the position where we are creating employment for our own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don’t have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)

Money, People, Education, Communication

“Business men, professional men, and wage workers alike must understand that there should be no question of their enjoying any rights whatsoever unless in the fullest way they recognize and live up to the duties that go with those rights. This is just as true of the corporation as of the trade-union, and if either corporation or trade-union fails heartily to acknowledge this truth, then its activities are necessarily anti-social and detrimental to the welfare of the body politic as a whole. In war time, when the welfare of the nation is at stake, it should be accepted as axiomatic that the employer is to make no profit out of the war save that which is necessary to the efficient running of the business and to the living expenses of himself and family, and that the wageworker is to treat his wage from exactly the same standpoint and is to see to it that the labor organization to which he belongs is, in all its activities, subordinated to the service of the nation.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: Again, every citizen should be trained sedulously by every activity at our command to realize his duty to the nation. In France at this moment the workingmen who are not at the front are spending all their energies with the single thought of helping their brethren at the front by what they do in the munition plant, on the railroads, in the factories. It is a shocking, a lamentable thing that many of the trade-unions of England have taken a directly opposite view. I am not concerned with whether it be true, as they assert, that their employers are trying to exploit them, or, as these employers assert, that the labor men are trying to gain profit for those who stay at home at the cost of their brethren who fight in the trenches. The thing for us Americans to realize is that we must do our best to prevent similar conditions from growing up here. Business men, professional men, and wage workers alike must understand that there should be no question of their enjoying any rights whatsoever unless in the fullest way they recognize and live up to the duties that go with those rights. This is just as true of the corporation as of the trade-union, and if either corporation or trade-union fails heartily to acknowledge this truth, then its activities are necessarily anti-social and detrimental to the welfare of the body politic as a whole. In war time, when the welfare of the nation is at stake, it should be accepted as axiomatic that the employer is to make no profit out of the war save that which is necessary to the efficient running of the business and to the living expenses of himself and family, and that the wageworker is to treat his wage from exactly the same standpoint and is to see to it that the labor organization to which he belongs is, in all its activities, subordinated to the service of the nation.

Men, War, Truth, Family

“Any employer who fails to recognize that human rights come first and that the friendly relationship between himself and those working for him should be one of partnership and comradeship in mutual help no less than self-help is recreant to his duty as an American citizen, and it is to his interest”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: Now there must be some application of this spirit in times of peace or we cannot suddenly develop it in time of war. The strike situation in the United States at this time is a scandal to the country as a whole and discreditable alike to employer and employee. Any employer who fails to recognize that human rights come first and that the friendly relationship between himself and those working for him should be one of partnership and comradeship in mutual help no less than self-help is recreant to his duty as an American citizen, and it is to his interest, having in view the enormous destruction of life in [[w:World War I|the present war], to conserve, and to train to higher efficiency, alike for his benefit and for its, the labor supply. In return any employee who acts along the lines publicly advocated by the men who profess to speak for the I. W. W. is not merely an open enemy of business, but of this entire country and is out of place in our government.

Help, Partnership

“He discovers in them, therefore, necessary members of his spirit; he observes that both must be united in some common Principle. He infers that Eclecticism is nothing but the imperfect defective employment of this principle.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Pupils at Sais (1799)
Context: If on the one hand the Scholastics and Alchemists seem to be utterly at variance, and the Eclectics on the other hand quite at one, yet, strictly examined, it is altogether the reverse. The former, in essentials, are indirectly of one opinion; namely, as regards the non-dependence, and infinite character of Meditation, they both set out from the Absolute: whilst the Eclectic and limited sort are essentially at variance; and agree only in what is deduced. The former are infinite but uniform, the latter bounded but multiform; the former have genius, the latter talent; those have Ideas, these have knacks (Handgriffe); those are heads without hands, these are hands without heads. The third stage is for the Artist, who can be at once implement and genius. He finds that that primitive Separation in the absolute Philosophical Activities' (between the Scholastic, and the "rude, intuitive Poet") 'is a deeper-lying Separation in his own Nature; which Separation indicates, by its existence as such, the possibility of being adjusted, of being joined: he finds that, heterogeneous as these Activities are, there is yet a faculty in him of passing from the one to the other, of changing his polarity at will. He discovers in them, therefore, necessary members of his spirit; he observes that both must be united in some common Principle. He infers that Eclecticism is nothing but the imperfect defective employment of this principle.

“It is not only highly desirable but necessary that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no conscience and will do right only under fear of punishment.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
Context: No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is highly undesirable, on the one hand, to weaken individual initiative, and, on the other hand, that in a constantly increasing number of cases we shall find it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past we have shackled force. It is not only highly desirable but necessary that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no conscience and will do right only under fear of punishment. Nor can legislation stop only with what are termed labor questions. The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old attitude of the state and the nation toward property.

Fear

“The same government that you go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your economic opportunities, deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of decent education. You don’t need to go to the employer alone, it is the government itself, the government of America, that is responsible for the oppression and exploitation and degradation of black people in this country.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: You and I in America are faced not with a segregationist conspiracy, we’re faced with a government conspiracy. Everyone who’s filibustering is a senator—that’s the government. Everyone who’s finagling in Washington, D. C., is a congressman—that’s the government. You don’t have anybody putting blocks in your path but people who are a part of the government. The same government that you go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your economic opportunities, deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of decent education. You don’t need to go to the employer alone, it is the government itself, the government of America, that is responsible for the oppression and exploitation and degradation of black people in this country. And you should drop it in their lap. This government has failed the Negro. This so-called democracy has failed the Negro. And all these white liberals have definitely failed the Negro.

People, Education, Fight, Housing

“Though we have achieved considerable success in our policy of increasing production and maintaining full employment, this has been accompanied by constant pressure for higher wages resulting in higher prices. We have not yet found out how we can maintain full employment in combination with stable or decreasing costs and prices.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Memorandum, 'The Dollar Situation: Forthcoming Discussions with U.S.A. and Canada' (4 July 1949), quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities: 1945–1950 (London: Pan, 1996), p. 353
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Success

“William inherited very large possessions, part of which consisted of crown debts, due to the vice-admiral for sums he had advanced for the sea-service. No moneys were at that time less secure than those owing from the king. Penn was obliged to go, more than once, and "thee" and "thou" Charles and his ministers, to recover the debt; and at last, instead of specie, the government invested him with the right and sovereignty of a province of America, to the south of Maryland. Thus was a Quaker raised to sovereign power.
He set sail for his new dominions with two ships filled with Quakers, who followed his fortune. The country was then named by them Pennsylvania, from William Penn; and he founded Philadelphia, which is now a very flourishing city. His first care was to make an alliance with his American neighbors; and this is the only treaty between those people and the Christians that was not ratified by an oath, and that was never infringed. The new sovereign also enacted several wise and wholesome laws for his colony, which have remained invariably the same to this day. The chief is, to ill-treat no person on account of religion, and to consider as brethren all those who believe in one God. He had no sooner settled his government than several American merchants came and peopled this colony. The natives of the country, instead of flying into the woods, cultivated by degrees a friendship with the peaceable Quakers. They loved these new strangers as much as they disliked the other Christians, who had conquered and ravaged America. In a little time these savages, as they are called, delighted with their new neighbors, flocked in crowds to Penn, to offer themselves as his vassals. It was an uncommon thing to behold a sovereign "thee'd" and "thou'd" by his subjects, and addressed by them with their hats on; and no less singular for a government to be without one priest in it; a people without arms, either for offence or preservation; a body of citizens without any distinctions but those of public employments; and for neighbors to live together free from envy or jealousy. In a word, William Penn might, with reason, boast of having brought down upon earth the Golden Age, which in all probability, never had any real existence but in his dominions.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Variants:
No oaths, no seals, no official mummeries were used; the treaty was ratified on both sides with a yea, yea — the only one, says Voltaire, that the world has known, never sworn to and never broken.
As quoted in William Penn : An Historical Biography (1851) by William Hepworth Dixon
William Penn began by making a league with the Americans, his neighbors. It is the only one between those natives and the Christians which was never sworn to, and the only one that was never broken.
As quoted in American Pioneers (1905), by William Augustus Mowry and Blanche Swett Mowry, p. 80
It was the only treaty made by the settlers with the Indians that was never sworn to, and the only one that was never broken.
As quoted in A History of the American Peace Movement (2008) by Charles F. Howlett, and ‎Robbie Lieberman, p. 33
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Money, God, Sea, Religion

“Uncertainty is the equivalent of a predator waiting in the shadows and pounces upon us when least expected. Frequently, we are aware of pending uncertainty, such as, waiting for the results; of a test, a pending loan application, a promotion or potential employment, and the fact uncertainty will be present for our entire life.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1990

Life, Waiting

“To force a change sometimes you need to stand up. You know what you’re worth – rather than what your employer is paying you. We’re not scared. To move the women’s game ahead we need to do what’s necessary. I feel other national teams are looking at us for that guidance.”

Alex Morgan (1989) American soccer player

"Alex Morgan: ‘If Fifa start respecting the women’s game more, others will follow’" https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jan/16/alex-morgan-us-soccer-football-fifa-lyon-women-equality (Janaury 17, 2017)

Game, Change, Feeling, Women

“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“employers sense in me a denial of their values… they fear me. i suspect that they can see that i am forced to function in a century which i loathe.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Fear, Sense

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Happiness

“Employers are like horses — they require management.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Carry On, Jeeves

Source: Carry on, Jeeves

Horse

“Know something? I'd lay even odds that between the people following us and the people hunting us, we've become this city's principle means of employment. Tal Verrar's entire economy is now based on.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

People

“I'll tell ye, Sassenach; if ever I feel the need to change my manner of employment, I dinna think I'll take up attacking women - it's a bloody hard way to make a living.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Women, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands. As long therefore as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or any thing else. But our citizens will find employment in this line till their numbers, and of course their productions, become too great for the demand both internal and foreign.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Jay (23 August 1785); published in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1953), edited by Julian P. Boyd, vol. 8, p. 426
1780s

Wedding, Country

“As to the notion that the Brazilian nation see the criminality of slave trade and have for ever abjured it such a notion is too childish for a grown man really to entertain, however it may suit the Brazilians to endeavour to make it accepted. The plain truth is that the Portuguese are of all European nations the lowest in the moral state and the Brazilians are degenerate Portuguese, demoralized by slavery and slave trade, and all the degrading and corrupting influences connected with both… I have laboured indefatigably all the time I was at the Foreign Office to put an end to the slave trade, and though not with entire at all events with some considerable success and nothing shall induce me to load my conscience with the guilt of having been a party to promoting its revival. I am afraid Bright has been at you upon these Brazilian matters. He has always professed great horror of slave trade and has invariably opposed the employment of any and every means by which it could be made to cease.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to John Russell (5 October 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 544.
1860s

Truth, Time, Success

“The most successful people in the workplace are those who normally really like and ‘buy-into’ their employer’s mission and vision. In other words such people like what the company wishes to achieve and where it is heading. It is akin to being on a ship and liking what the ship is doing and liking where the ship is heading. Can you imagine being on a ship and not wishing to go where it is heading?”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Page 62 Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse

People, Imagination, Success

“My last girl was Jewish, which is often a warm kind of girl, concerned about food intake and employability. They don't like you to work too hard, I understand, until you're hooked and then, you bastard, sweat!”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"The Contest" (1959)

Food, Girl, Understanding

“In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Home, Suffering, Parting, Country

“From the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England to the present in development countries, the household unit has resisted dependency on factory employment by clinging to a semisubsistence strategy.”

June Nash (1927–2019) American anthropologist

Source: Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor, 1983, p. 93

Dependency, Country

“Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women's overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force.This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, how ever, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of pay rolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it.So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to "pay for itself."After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors, and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment.”

Henry Hazlitt book Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Curse of Machinery (ch. 7)

Women, Men, Money, Hope

“In addition, profits are so completely subordinated in Germany and Italy to requirements of a militarily conceived national interest and of full employment that the maintenance of the profit principle is purely theoretical. Profits have lost their autonomy as an independent, not to say the supreme, goal of economic activity.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 149

“Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike…In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude…of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment…What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 164-165.
1926

Men, War, Secret, Communication

“But with the passing of the day of lands so cheap as to be well-nigh free, we are coming to confront a new set of conditions. It has been found necessary to inquire whether under these new conditions we can be sure of finding employment for the diverse elements and enormous numbers of new immigrants that are offered to us. We are all agreed, whether we be Americans of the first or of the seventh generation on this soil, that it is not desirable to receive more immigrants than can reasonably be assured of bettering their condition by coming here. For the sake both of those who would come and more especially of those already here, it has been thought wise to avoid the danger of increasing our numbers too fast. It is not a reflection on any race or creed. We might not be able to support them if their numbers were too great. In such event, the first sufferers would be the most recent immigrants, unaccustomed to our life and language and industrial methods. We want to keep wages and living conditions good for everyone who is now here or who may come here.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

Life, Support, Suffering

“If Women Have An Equal EMPLOYMENT Opportunity Commission, Why Don’t Men Have An Equal FAMILY Opportunity Commission?”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 197.

Women, Men, Family

“There's nothing like active employment to console the afflicted.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XLVII : Startling Intelligence; Eliza to Gilbert

Affliction

“What these tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine, since the "right" answers should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders. At The Maids, a housecleaning service, I am given something called the "Accutrac personality test," which warns at the beginning that "Accutrac has multiple measures which detect attempts to distort or 'psych out' the questionnaire." Naturally, I "never" find it hard "to stop moods of self-pity," nor do I imagine that others are talking about me behind my back or believe that "management and employees will always be in conflict because they have totally different sets of goals."”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us.
Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), Ch. 2: Scrubbing in Maine (p. 59)

Secret, Imagination, Mood, Nature

“Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

E 65
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)

Lie, Books, Light, Reading

“I must beg leave to recommend to your Excellency's consideration the appointing an officer to write and sign the necessary passes. The person I should wish to be appointed is Lieutenant Bio d get. If it was put in general orders, that passes signed by him should be deemed authentic, as if signed by me, it would leave me at liberty to pursue the more important employments of my station.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1776)

Personality

“Now that the once omnipotent Liberal party has so declined, it is hard to realise how formidable it was in 1911—especially in Scotland. Its dogmas were so completely taken for granted that their presentation partook less of argument than of a tribal incantation. Mr. Gladstone had given it an aura of earnest morality, so that its platforms were also pulpits and its harangues had the weight of sermons. Its members seemed to assume that their opponents must be lacking either in morals or mind. The Tories were the "stupid" party; Liberals alone understood and sympathised with the poor; a working man who was not a Liberal was inaccessible to reason, or morally corrupt, or intimidated by laird or employer. I remember a lady summing up the attitude thus: Tories may think they are better born, but Liberals know that they are born better.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

Stupidity, Thinking

“The greatest danger to the British Empire and to the British people is not to be found among the enormous fleets and armies of the European Continent, nor in the solemn problems of Hindustan; it is not in the 'Yellow Peril' nor the 'Black Peril' nor any danger in the wide circuit of colonial and foreign affairs. No, it is here in our midst, close at home, close at hand in the vast growing cities of England and Scotland, and in the dwindling and cramped villages of our denuded countryside. It is there you will find the seeds of Imperial ruin and national decay—the unnatural gap between rich and poor, the divorce of the people from the land, the want of proper discipline and training in our youth, the exploitation of boy labour, the physical degeneration which seems to follow so swiftly on civilized poverty, the awful jumbles of an obsolete Poor Law, the horrid havoc of the liquor traffic, the constant insecurity in the means of subsistence and employment which breaks the heart of many a sober, hard-working man, the absence of any established minimum standard of life and comfort among the workers, and, at the other end, the swift increase of vulgar, joyless luxury—here are the enemies of Britain. Beware lest they shatter the foundations of her power.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 139-140
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, People, Youth, Law

“He (Mr. Cobden) wanted hon. Gentlemen opposite to bring in a little head, as well as a little heart, when they were dealing with this question…he trusted the time was coming when men would no longer rush into hasty legislation prompted by feelings of benevolence and philanthropy alone, but repudiating the facts of that science which taught how to legislate with something like probability of the result being for the general benefit of the community. He did not oppose interference between masters and men for the sake of employers alone; he opposed all interference whatever with the labour of adults, primarily for the sake of the adults themselves. If they were to establish the principle that Parliament would not interfere at all with labour, and would not interfere between masters and workmen, it would be the best thing for the working men that that House could do.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/22/factories-bill in the House of Commons (22 May 1846) against the Factory Act 1847. 1840s

Men, Feeling, Communication, Question

“The fundamental values of a true community are elsewhere: in love, poetry, disinterested thought, the free use of the imagination, the pursuit of non-utilitarian activities, the production of non-profitmaking goods, the employment of non-consumable wealth - here are the sustaining values of a living culture.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Faith for Living (1940)

Love, Imagination, Communication, Wealth

“When the economy is in a depression, scarcity ceases to rule. Productive resources sit idle, so that it is possible to have more of some things without having less of others; free lunches are all around. As a result, all the usual rules of economics are stood on their head; we enter a looking-glass world in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly. Thrift hurts our future prospects; sound money makes us poorer. Moreover, that's the kind of world we have been living in for the past several years, which means that it is a kind of world that students should understand. […] Depression economics is marked by paradoxes, in which seemingly virtuous actions have perverse, harmful effects. Two paradoxes in particular stand out: the paradox of thrift, in which the attempt to save more actually leads to the nation as a whole saving less, and the less-well-known paradox of flexibility, in which the willingness of workers to protect their jobs by accepting lower wages actually reduces total employment. […] In times of depression, the rules are different. Conventionally sound policy – balanced budgets, a firm commitment to price stability – helps to keep the economy depressed. Once again, this is not normal. Most of the time we are not in a depression. But sometimes we are – and 2013, when this chapter was written, was one of those times.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

“Depressions are Different”, in Robert M. Solow, ed. Economics for the Curious: Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates. 2014.

Money, World, Understanding, Time

“Workmen's compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold consolations, if there be no employment.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

From the speech "Plymouth, Labor Day" (1 September 1919), as printed in Have Faith in Massachusetts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (2nd Ed.), Houghton Mifflin, pp. 200-201 : see link above.
1910s, Plymouth, Labor Day (1919)

“The division of the spoils between the victors will also provide employment for a powerful office, whose doorsteps the greedy adventurers and jealous concession hunters of twenty or thirty nations will crowd and defile.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter IV, Section I, p. 77

“Train any population rationally, and they will be rational. Furnish honest and useful employments to those so trained, and such employments they will greatly prefer to dishonest or injurious occupations. It is beyond all calculation the interest of every government to provide that training and that employment; and to provide both is easily practicable.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

A New View of Society (1813-1816)

Training

“Broadly speaking, then, the best type of management in ordinary use may be defined as management in which the workmen give their best initiative and in return receive some special incentive from their employers. This type of management will be referred to as the management of “initiative and incentive” in contradistinction to scientific management, or task management, with which it is to be compared.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, p. 87 (2014 ed.).

“Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 30

Thinking

“One of the characters of the Senate, and one of the upheavals of the Populist movement was Senator Jeff. Davis, of Arkansas. Davis was loudly, vociferously, and clamorously a friend of the people. Precisely what he did to benefit the people was never very clear, but if we must take his word for it, he was the only friend the people had. Among his efforts to help the people was to denounce big business of all kinds and anything which gave large employment or had great capital. I think that in his own mind the ideal state would have been made of small landowners and an occasional lawyer. He himself was a lawyer.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

My Memories of Eighty Years (1922), p. 184

People, Business, Thinking, Effort

“It was once said by Abraham Lincoln that this Republic could not long endure half slave and half free; and the same may be said with even more truth of the black citizens of this country. They cannot remain half slave and half free. They must be one thing or the other. And this brings me to consider the alternative now presented between slavery and freedom in this country. From my outlook, I am free to affirm that I see nothing for the negro of the South but a condition of absolute freedom, or of absolute slavery. I see no half-way place for him. One or the other of these conditions is to solve the so-called negro problem. There are forces at work in both of these directions, and for the present that which aims at the re-enslavement of the negro seems to have the advantage. Let it be remembered that the labor of the negro is his only capital. Take this from him, and he dies from starvation. The present mode of obtaining his labor in the South gives the old master-class a complete mastery over him. I showed this in my last annual celebration address, and I need not go into it here. The payment of the negro by orders on stores, where the storekeeper controls price, quality, and quantity, and is subject to no competition, so that the negro must buy there and nowhere else–an arrangement by which the negro never has a dollar to lay by, and can be kept in debt to his employer, year in and year out–puts him completely at the mercy of the old master-class. He who could say to the negro, when a slave, you shall work for me or be whipped to death, can now say to him with equal emphasis, you shall work for me, or I will starve you to death… This is the plain, matter-of-fact, and unexaggerated condition of the plantation negro in the Southern States today.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Death, Truth, Way, Problem

“The usage of the words “public" and “public sphere” betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Source: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1963/1991, p. 1 as cited in: Gandy, M (1997) "Ecology, modernity and the intellectual legacy of the Frankfurt School". In: Light, A and Smith, JM, (eds.) Space, Place and Environmental Ethics. p. 240

Appearance

“The research questions that motivate most quantitative studies in the health, social and behavioral sciences are not statistical but causal in nature. For example, what is the efficacy of a given drug in a given population? Whether data can prove an employer guilty of hiring discrimination? What fraction of past crimes could have been avoided by a given policy? What was the cause of death of a given individual, in a specific incident? These are causal questions because they require some knowledge of the data-generating process; they cannot be computed from the data alone.”

Judea Pearl (1936) Computer scientist

Pearl, Judea (2008) "Causal Inference," in: Pearl, Judea. The science and ethics of causal modeling. (2010).

Death, Health, Behavior, Motivation

“As for principles of law, he should know those which are necessary in the case of buildings having party walls, with regard to water dripping from the eaves, and also the laws about drains, windows, and water supply. And other things of this sort should be known to architects, so that… they may be careful not to leave disputed points for the householders to settle after the works are finished, and so that in drawing up contracts the interests of both employer and contractor may be wisely safe-guarded.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 10

Law, Water, Drawing

“Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 66.
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Men, Books, Search, Business

“It happened fortunately that during this period of turmoil the guidance of the Christian Church, the one powerful and permanent institution, was chiefly in the hands of the splendid order of St. Benedict. This saint… seeing that idleness was the besetting danger of monastic establishments, founded at Monte Cassino… a model abbey, in which industry was the daily rule. Among other employments, reading and writing were approved as powerful agents in distracting the mind from unholy thoughts, and in Benedictine monasteries the mechanical exercise of copying mss. became one of the regular occupations.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Companion to School Classics (1888)

Exercises, Reading

“How will the cessation of war purchases of planes, guns, tanks, and ships … affect the national level of employment? How many new jobs will be created by the consumers’demand for an additional one million of passenger cars, how many of these jobs can be expected to be located in the automobile industry itself, and how many in other industries such as Steel and the Chemicals, the Coal and the Petroleum industries? How much additional freight traffic and revenue can the American railroads expect to derive from every billion dollars worth spent on post-war housing construction?”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 141: as cited in: Frits Bos, " Three centuries of macro-economic statistics http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35391/1/Three_centuries_macroeconomic_statistics.pdf." (2011).

War, Cars, Housing

“The science or art of war requires a freedom of thought, and leisure to reflect upon the various incidents that daily occur, which cannot be had where the whole of one's time is engrossed in clerical employments. The time devoted to this employment is not the only injury I feel; but it confines my thoughts as well as engrosses my time. It is like a merchandise of small wares.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1776)

War, Art, Feeling, Freedom