Quotes about labor (1260 quotes, page 3)

“Immaterial labor has become hegemonic in qualitative terms and has imposed a tendency on other forms of labor and society itself. Immaterial labor, in other words, is today in the same position that industrial labor was 150 years ago, when it accounted for only a small fraction of global production and was concentrated in a small part of the world but nonetheless exerted hegemony over all other forms of production. Just as in that pgase all forms of labor and society itself had to industrialize, today, labor and society have to informationalize, become intelligent, become communicative, become affective.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

109
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

World , Intelligence , Communication , Parting

“The century of revolution in the United States after the Civil War was economic, not political, freeing households from an unremitting daily grind of painful manual labor, household drudgery, darkness, isolation, and early death. Only one hundred years later, daily life had changed beyond recognition. Manual outdoor jobs were replaced by work in air-conditioned environments, housework was increasingly performed by electric appliances, darkness was replaced by light, and isolation was replaced not just by travel, but also by color television images bringing the world into the living room. Most important, a newborn infant could expect to live not to age forty-five, but to age seventy-two. The economic revolution of 1870 to 1970 was unique in human history, unrepeatable because so many of its achievements could happen only once.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 2016, p. 1 ; Lead paragraph

Life , Death , Pain , War

“Communism further alleges that religion is not of divine origin but is simply a man-made tool used by the dominant class to suppress the exploited class. Marx and Engels described religion as the opiate of the people which is designed to lull them into humble submission and an acceptance of the prevailing mode of production which the dominant class desires to perpetuate. Any student of history would agree that there have been times in history when unscrupulous individuals and even misdirected religious organizations have abused the power of religion, just as all other institutions of society have been abused at various times. But it was not the abuse of religion which Marx and Engels deplored as much as the very existence of religion. They considered it a creation of the dominant class, a tool and a weapon in the hands of the oppressors. They pointed out the three-fold function of religion from their point of view: first, it teaches respect for property rights; second, it teaches the poor their duties towards the property and prerogatives of the ruling class; and third, it instills a spirit of acquiescence among the exploited poor so as to destroy their revolutionary spirit. The fallacy of these allegations is obvious to any student of Judaic-Christian teachings. The Biblical teaching of respect for property applies to rich and poor alike; it admonishes the rich to give the laborer his proper wages and to share their riches with the needy.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

People , Religion , History , Communication

“Is it fitting that our intelligence exert itself and labor in speculations which are not binding upon us, in fruitless argumentation, in laws which have no application to us, while we leave to habit and abandon to mechanical observance our great debt to our Creator?”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Introduction

Law , Intelligence

“Western field-work conjures up images of struggle on horseback […]—toughing it out on one canteen a day as you labor up and down mountains. The value of a site is supposedly correlated with the difficulty of getting there. This, of course, is romantic drivel. Ease of access is no measure of importance. The famous La Brea tar pits are right in downtown Los Angeles. To reach the Clarkia lake beds, you turn off the main road at Buzzard's Roost Trophy Company and drive the remaining fifty yards right up to the site.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Magnolias from Moscow", p. 403
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Angels , Mountain

“We must keep up the standard of Christian living in the Christian laborer. Clean hands are needed to do Christian work. Character is before co-operation, being before doing. "Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine."”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 316.

“Labor has a universal position of opposition to the death penalty both at home and abroad… It is not possible in our view to be selective in the application of this policy.”

Kevin Rudd (1957) Australian politician, 26th Prime Minister of Australia

ALP in 'me-too' policy mess over death penalty, 10 October 2007, 13 February 2008, The Age http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/rudds-metoo-policy-mess/2007/10/09/1191695909938.html,
Statement made in 2002.
2002

Death , Penalty , Home , Universe

“We don't get weapons contracts, nigga / We don't get cheap labor for our company, nigga / We ARE cheap labour, nigga / Turn off the news and read, nigga / read…”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The 4th Branch
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Reading

“[T]he unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. ix

“We cannot have the government or the Labor party go to the next election with a person leading the party and a person floating around as the potential alternative leader. Anybody who enters the ballot tonight should do it on the following conditions: that if you win you're Labor leader, that if you lose you retire from politics.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Calling for a vote of confidence

"Australia politics: Gillard, Rudd in leadership vote" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23058602, in BBC News website, 26 June 2013

Personality

“The vanguard of industrial investment in the world capitalist system is in the lowest paid segment of those countries paying the lowest wages. Young women in developing countries are the labor force on this frontier just as women and children were in the industrialization of England and Europe in the nineteenth century. Escaping the patriarchal restrictions of domestic production, young women workers are segregated in the new industrial compounds where they are subject to the patriarchal control of managers.”

June Nash (1927–2019) American anthropologist

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

Women , Children , World , Country

“But will reënforcement work the other way, also? Religion strengthens the social spirit; will the social spirit strengthen personal religion? When a minister gets hot about child labor and wage slavery, is he not apt to get cold about prayer meetings and evangelistic efforts? When young women become interested in social work, do they not often lose their taste for the culture of the spiritual life and the peace of religious meditation?”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 103

Life , Women , Peace , Religion

“The labor should include rest breaks so that the worker has time to recover from fatigue. Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work.”

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

Source: Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, p. 59.

Stupidity , Intelligence , Understanding , Science

“The main defect of idealism in philosophy and history is that it attempts to analyze the properties of societies by inference from the content of the dominant systems of ideas in those societies. But this neglects altogether the fact that there is not a unilateral relationship between values and power: the dominant class is able to disseminate ideas which are the legitimations of its position of dominance. Thus the ideas of freedom and equality which come to the fore in bourgeois society cannot be taken at their “face value,” as directly summing up social reality; on the contrary, the legal freedoms which exist in bourgeois society actually serve to legitimize the reality of contractual obligations in which propertyless wage-labor is heavily disadvantaged as compared to the owners of capital. … While ideologies obviously show continuity over time, neither this continuity. nor any changes which occur, can be explained purely in terms of their internal content. Ideas do not evolve on their own account; they do so as elements of the consciousness of men living in society.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

(describing Marx’s view), pp. 41-42.
Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971)

Men , History , Idea , Reality

“He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. I, ch. 5.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

World , Art

“We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor,…have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south…when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.”

Ross Perot (1930–2019) American businessman

1992 Presidential Debate, regarding the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Transcript http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/16/us/the-1992-campaign-transcript-of-2d-tv-debate-between-bush-clinton-and-perot.html

Money , Health , Cars , Country

“For him who loves labor, there is always something to do.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 219
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Love

“The editorial, very poorly written for a college full of smart students, shows how far this “hate speech” cancer has spread. Let me provide for you Coyne’s Glossary for the words at issue:
:“free speech”: Speech that you like because it comports with your ideology

:“hate speech”: Speech you don’t like because it challenges your ideology

:“Nazi”: Anyone uttering “hate speech” (see above)

:“White supremacist”: See “Nazi”

:“emotional labor”: Having to argue your case rationally—something to be avoided at all costs when you can simply call people names”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

see “Nazi”
" Latest college shenanigans by the Regressive Left: censorship at Pomona and UCLA; Wellesley student paper publishes “we need free speech but...” editorial https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/latest-news-about-college-shenanigans-by-the-regressive-left-censorship-at-pomona-and-ucla-wellesley-student-paper-writes-we-need-free-speech-but-article/" April 21, 2017

Hate , People

“The labor unions of Indiana proceeded to meet and resolve. They resolved in such violent and vicious language that no partisan press could be found willing to print the resolutions. Long afterward I learned that I was shadowed for six months by Secret Service men in the fear that I might be assaulted by some over-zealous union man. Of this I was not aware at the time, or I should have taken steps to have prevented it. Whether I am a Presbyterian or a fatalist I do not know, but I do know that if I am to be shot, I will never be hanged.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter XIV

Men , Secret , Fear , Learning

“…the Democrats know that no matter how many GATTs, NAFTAs, empty OSHAs, and other betrayals…they heap on those labor leaders, they can be had because, once again, the Republicans are deemed worse.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Green Party presidential candidacy speech (2000), Crashing the Party (2002)

Betrayal

“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

“Culture is constituted by human labor, the aesthetic, and the spirit. In this regard, culture is an integrated way of life which shuns false dichotomies between sacred and so-called secular. Human labor denotes a mutuality between base and superstructure. The aesthetic argues for a norm grounded in internal beauty and ethical functionality. And the spirit is the vivifying thread woven throughout all of culture.”

Dwight Hopkins (1953) American academic

"A Black Theology of Liberation," Black Theology, v. 3, n. 1, January 2005

Life , Beauty , Way , Falseness

“Those seeking to work out the relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis have not been immune to the intellectual division of labor that severs the life nerve of dialectical thought.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 74

Life

“The Soviet Army, Air Force and Navy are strong enough to thwart any attempts of imperalist reaction to disrupt the peaceful labor of our people or the unity and solidarity of the socialist camp.”

Rodion Malinovsky (1898–1967) Soviet military commander and politician

Quoted in "Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument" - Page 93 - by Stephen S. Kaplan - Political Science - 1981

People , Peace , Strong

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , People , Law , Dreams

“In pre-war correspondence, Lee castigated the abolitionists for their political activity, and he never showed any qualms about the social order that he would later defend with arms. He also had a few slaves that he inherited as part of a will agreement, with provisions to emancipate those slaves. But in fact, he dragged his heels in complying with the terms of that will. And he never gave a second thought to the fact that his beloved Arlington mansion was run by slave labor.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2000s, Intelligence Report: Rebels With A Cause (2000)

War , Parting

“San Domingo, with a stable government, under which her immense resources can be developed, will give remunerative wages to tens of thousands of laborers not now upon the island. This labor will take advantage of every available means of transportation to abandon the adjacent islands and seek the blessings of freedom and its sequence—each inhabitant receiving the reward of his own labor. Porto Rico and Cuba will have to abolish slavery, as a measure of self-preservation, to retain their laborers.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Second State of the Union Address (1870)

Freedom

“Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their works — with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827) — showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

War

“The worker is no longer the slave to his reproductive urge. He is a free bargaining agent who enters the market to dispose of the one commodity he commands — labor power — and if he gets a rise in wages he will not be so foolish as to squander it in a self-defeating proliferation of his numbers.
The capitalist faces him in the arena. His greed and lust for wealth are caustically described in those chapters that leave the abstract world for a look into 1860 England. But it is worth noting that he is not money hungry from mere motives of rapacity; he is an owner-entrepreneur engaged in an endless race against his fellow owner-entrepreneurs; he must strive for accumulation, for in the competitive environment in which he operates, one accumulates or one gets accumulated.
The stage is set and the characters take their places. But now the first difficulty appears. How, asks Marx, can profits exist in such a situation? If everything sells for its exact value, then who gets an unearned increment?”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter VI, Karl Marx, p. 148

Money , World , Motivation , Appearance

“But in the judgments they exercise they are most accurate and just, nor do they pass sentence by the votes of a court that is fewer than a hundred. And as to what is once determined by that number, it is unalterable. What they most of all honor, after God himself, is the name of their legislator [Moses], whom if any one blaspheme he is punished capitally. They also think it a good thing to obey their elders, and the major part. Accordingly, if ten of them be sitting together, no one of them will speak while the other nine are against it. They also avoid spitting in the midst of them, or on the right side. Moreover, they are stricter than any other of the Jews in resting from their labors on the seventh day; for they not only get their food ready the day before, that they may not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day, but they will not remove any vessel out of its place, nor go to stool thereon. Nay, on other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when they are first admitted among them); and covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront the Divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, after which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit; and even this they do only in the more lonely places, which they choose out for this purpose; and although this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it, as if it were a defilement to them.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

God , Food , Exercises , Nature

“I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 2: Fire Over England, p. 34

Nature

“Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.”

Benedict of Nursia (480–547) Christian saint and monk

Rule of St. Benedict: opening words

Love , Heart

“It is impossible to explain the latest works of these wild men | that is, the artists of Der Blaue Reiter, and Die Brücke, [working in Munich, and Berlin] in terms of a formal evolution and a reinterpretation of Impressionism. The loveliest prismatic colors and the famous Cubist style have become meaningless in terms of the objectives of the iconoclasts. Their thinking has a different aim: with their labor, they want to create symbols for their era. symbols that belong on the altars of the coming spiritual religions behind which the technical producer will vanish.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote of Franz Marc, in his text in the Almanac of the 'Blaue Reiter', 1912; as cited in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 95
1911 - 1914

Men , Religion , Color , Thinking

“Dutifully I thumbed the rides, hopped the B & Os and the Great Northerns, balled the lithe small-town girls in the band shells of their hometown parks, held the job as field hand and day laborer and soda jerk, saw the crude spectacles of American landscape slide past me as I lay in an open boxcar and drank cheap red wine; and if I didn't, I might as well have.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Jerk , Girl , Wine , Past

“The tendency was to sell families as units, if for no other reason [than] to keep the slaves contented. The gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains. At the other extreme, when the Central of Georgia railroad company in 1858 equipped a Negro sleeping car to assist in the slave trade it set a standard not always maintained in a later generation. When on the block, the slave was as likely to hinder as to help in his sale. Some, out of a vain conceit in bringing a high price, would boast of their physical prowess, in which case an unwary purchaser would likely be cheated. Others would malinger, because of a grudge against owners or traders or in order to bring a low price and be put at less tiring labor. Dealers, also, adopted the tricks of horse traders to make their merchants more attractive -- the greasiest Negro was generally considered the healthiest.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Family , Cars , Sleep , Help

“We have an autocracy which — which runs this university. It's managed. We were told the following: If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received — from a well-meaning liberal — was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?" That's the answer.Well I ask you to consider — if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something — the faculty are a bunch of employees and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be — have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean — Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!”

Mario Savio (1942–1996) American activist

Speech, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariosaviosproulhallsitin.htm Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley (1964-12-02).

Imagination , Universe

“They call us thieves and bandits. They say we steal. But it was not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of Africa. We were robbed of our language, of our Gods, of our culture, of our human dignity, of our labor, and of our lives. They call us thieves, yet it is not.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

God , People

“In fact, the drive against the Communists is aimed, above all, against the labor movement.”

Benjamin J. Davis Jr. (1903–1964) American politician

"Why I am a Communist" (1947)

“The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

August 22
Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)

“We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.”

Jordan Anderson (1825–1907) Freed slave

"Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master"

Horse , Drawing , Night

“By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

The Reason of Church Government (1641), Book II, Introduction

Life , Nature , Study , Strong

“There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been demonstrably dumber than their Democratic counterparts. During the Reagan years, the G. O. P. briefly became known as the “party of ideas,” because it harvested so effectively the intellectual labor of conservative think tanks. … In recent years, however, the Republicans’ relationship to the realm of ideas has become more and more attenuated as talk-radio hosts and television personalities have taken over the role of defining the conservative movement that once belonged to thinkers.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

How the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Trump (August 2, 2016)

Idea , Thinking , Personality

“The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Six, Multinational Corporations, p. 260

World

“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; — grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

Gettysburg Oration (1863)

God , Nature , Silence

“Socialism means power, power, and more power. Thoughts and schemes are nothing without power. The path to power has already been mapped: the valuable elements of German labor in union with the best representatives of the Old Prussian state idea, both groups determined to build a strictly socialist state to democratize our nation in the Prussian manner; both forged into a unit by the same sense of duty, by the awareness of a great obligation, by the will to obey in order to rule, to die in order to win, by the strength to make immense sacrifices in order to accomplish what we were born for, what we are, what could not be without us.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

Idea , Sense

“The question rises whether in the middle of all these manifold, exciting labors and Party-assignments I could still find rime for intimate experiences, for the pangs and joys of love. Unfortunately, yes! I say unfortunately because ordinarily these experiences entailed all too many cares, disappointments, and pain, and because all too many energies were pointlessly consumed through them. Yet the longing to be understood by a man down to the deepest, most secret recesses of one's soul, to be recognized by him as a striving human being, repeatedly decided matters. And repeatedly disappointment ensued all too swiftly, since the friend saw in me only the feminine element which he tried to mold into a willing sounding board to his own ego. So repeatedly the moment inevitably arrived in which I had to shake off the chains of community with an aching heart but with a sovereign, uninfluenced will. Then I was again alone. But the greater the demands life made upon me, the more the responsible work waiting to be tackled, the greater grew the longing to be enveloped by love, warmth, understanding. All the easier, consequently, began the old story of disappointment in love, the old story of Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love , Life , Pain , Secret

“There are times when a company’s know-how, product range, and labor relations are in harmony with the world around it. The business situations are familiar, the company is well organized, and employees are trained and prepared. During those times, managers do not need to develop and implement new ideas. Their job is to allocate resources to promote growth and development, channeling capital and people to the parts of the organization best positioned to benefit from the current state of affairs. Those parts of the organization then become larger, better established, and more powerful.
But just when the company has organized itself, outside circumstances may change. New technologies come on the scene, markets shift, interest rates fluctuate, consumers’ tastes change, and the company must enter a new phase of life. In order to stay in sync with the outside world, it must be able to alter its marketing strategy, its product range, its organizational form, and where and how it does its manufacturing. And once a company has adapted to a new environment, it is no longer the organization it used to be; it has evolved. That is the essence of learning.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Cited in: Richard C. Huseman, Jon P. Goodman (1998), Leading with Knowledge: The Nature of Competition in the 21st Century. SAGE Publications, p. 72.
The Living Company, 1997

Life , People , World , Idea

“The wayfaring man, Christ Jesus, has helped many and many a tired traveler home with burdens quite as heavy as yours. Often and often He goes up and down this thoroughfare of life in search of just such overladen pilgrims; and His voice is sounding forth above all the babble of the busy tongues and the clatter of the busy wheels, saying, — "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 98.

Life , Travel , Home , Search

“You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;– liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;– liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;– liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;– liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood. This is the kind of liberty– the liberty to do wrong– which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

David Hunter, letter to Jefferson Davis https://books.google.com/books?id=Jc8VCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA59 (1863)

Children , Angels , Hell , Parent

“Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel,—that is all; for fuel is force.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

“Labor, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property of B.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

February 7, 1754 (Letter to Lord Chesterfield)
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Life , Water , Help , Indifference

“It's like being home again, when they bring in the hopelessly mangled person from the mine explosion, or the woman in her third day of labor, or the famished child struggling against pneumonia and my mother and Prim, they wear that same look on their faces. Now is the times to run away tho the woods, to hide in the trees until the patient is long gone and in another part of the Seam the hammers make the coffin. But I'm held here both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that holds the loved ones of the dying. How often I've seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don't they leave? Why do they stay to watch?
And now I know. It's because you have no choice.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss Everdeen, pp. 347-348
The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

Love , Home , Tree , 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)

“What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendors and fruitions of the beatific vision.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 306.

God , Way , Housing

“Labor is marching toward the goal of industrial democracy and contributing constructively toward a more rational arrangement of our domestic economy.”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

Labor and the Nation speech (September 3, 1937)

Democracy

“Civilization has done little for labor except to modify the forms of its exploitation.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

“The underlying principle of specialization is division of labor; but the term division of labor has become associated with the individual worker, whereas specialization is, in general, far reaching in its effects, and influences industrial enterprises of all kinds.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 37

“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

“I have read somewhere of a sermon preached by one of these in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. This old priest, among other things, said that the soul of a beggar was as dear to God as the soul of the richest of his people, and that Jesus Christ died as much for a beggar as for a prince. One French peasant, rough with labor, cried out: “I propose three cheers for Jesus Christ.””

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

I like such things. I like to hear of them. I like to repeat them.
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

God , People , Soul , Reading

“The Bitchun Society had all but done away with any sort of dull, repetitious labor, and what remained—tending bar, mopping toilets—commanded Whuffie aplenty and a life of leisure in your off-hours.”

Cory Doctorow book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003)

Life

“We are in agreement with him in his conviction that the laborer must be protected 'against the burdens of the good-for-nothing'. We want no such additions to our population as those who prey upon our institutions or our property. America has, in the popular mind, been an asylum for those who have been driven from their homes in foreign countries because of various forms of political and religious oppression. But America can not afford to remain an asylum after such people have passed the portals and begun to share the privileges of our institutions.”

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

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

People , Home , Country

“Another matter before the Congress is legislation affecting the labor sections of the transportation act. Much criticism has been directed at the workings of this section and experience has shown that some useful amendment could be made to these provisions.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

“To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labor, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Propositions, 2
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

“Senators undertake to disturb us… by reminding us of the possibility of large numbers swarming from China; but the answer to all this is very obvious and very simple. If the Chinese come here, they will come for citizenship or merely for labor. If they come for citizenship, then in this desire do they give a pledge of loyalty to our institutions; and where is the peril in such vows? They are peaceful and industrious; how can their citizenship be the occasion of solicitude?”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

Speech https://books.google.com/books?id=HGM9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA5172&lpg=PA5172&dq=%22Worse+than+any+heathen+or+pagan+abroad+are+those+in+our+midst+who+are+false+to+our+institutions.%22&source=bl&ots=n-wpUEfhND&sig=wHyJSOd8M1rswurZUUnUgAFrTn0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjXtt2swKjLAhWFGD4KHWCjBDsQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Worse%20than%20any%20heathen%20or%20pagan%20abroad%20are%20those%20in%20our%20midst%20who%20are%20false%20to%20our%20institutions.%22&f=false (4 July 1870)

Peace , Loyalty

“If the object of all human investigation were but to produce in cognition a reflection of the world as it exists, of what value would be all its labor and pains, which could result only in vain repetition, in an imitation within the soul of that which exists without it?”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 365

Pain , World , Soul

“Marx saw exploitation in terms of the rewards of human labor, but we can see it in terms of all the values of our society.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter VII : "It's Just Like Living", p. 186

“Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources.
Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals

Life , Youth , Beauty , Dreams

“A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,
No dangers fright him, and no labors tire.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 193

Soul

“The most serious problems lie in the financial sphere, where the economy’s debt overhead has grown more rapidly than the ‘real’ economy’s ability to carry this debt. … The essence of the global financial bubble is that savings are diverted to inflate the stock market, bond market and real estate prices rather than to build new factories and employ more labor.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Financial Capitalism v. Industrial Capitalism http://michael-hudson.com/1998/09/financial-capitalism-v-industrial-capitalism/ (September 3, 1998)
Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

Lie , Problem

“The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

Support

“Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

As quoted in Many Thoughts of Many Minds : A Treasury Of Quotations From The Literature Of Every Land And Every Age (1896) edited by Louis Klopsch

“The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

“I know the Leader of the Opposition [Tony Abbott] has an unhealthy kind of obsession with the so-called "faceless men in the Labor Party"; what he really should be obsessed about is the useless men sitting behind him.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

In Question Time, c. March 2012
"Labor cleans up after aftermath" http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2012/s3445116.htm, in Insiders (ABC), 4 March 2012

Men

“I never enjoyed writing a book more; indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Introduction, Section I, p. x
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Books , Sense , Joy

“What a son I’ve made. The midwives must have turned me in my labor so that I lay on your brain and crushed it.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Book 5, “The Serpent Wakes” Chapter 21 (p. 286)
The Storm Lord (1976)

“I became a vegetarian in 1969. … About eight and a half years ago, my husband and I decided to stop eating meat and then about six months later we stopped eating fish. … Partly because of my attitude towards health, and partly because of my husband's attitude toward animals. He's such an avid animal lover that, slaughtering them for food, he felt, was a worthless endeavor. I came to it from the point of view of someone who likes to be healthy, energetic, and vital. Together we both came to the same conclusions, but from different viewpoints, and eventually our reasons began to mingle. I began to share his attitude about animals and he began to appreciate the physical rewards of being a vegetarian. … I had two beautiful births as a vegetarian; they were great labors—no bleeding, no complications, no problems. The diet worked perfectly for me.”

Susan Saint James (1946) American actress and activist

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1979), pp. 46–47.

Health , Food , Beauty , Lovers

“Indeed, India has become notorious as a country in which a very large part of the working population is laboring in effective debt peonage to a landlord or other creditor.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Ten, "The Middle Ages", p. 256

Parting , Country

“Let no one charge us with capricious inconsistency in our actions against Albinus, and let no one think that I am disloyal to this alleged friend or lacking in feeling toward him. 2. We gave this man everything, even a share of the established empire, a thing which a man would hardly do for his own brother. Indeed, I bestowed upon him that which you entrusted to me alone. Surely Albinus has shown little gratitude for the many benefits I have lavished upon him. 3. Now |87 he is collecting an army to take up arms against us, scornful of your valor and indifferent to his pledge of good faith to me, wishing in his insatiable greed to seize at the risk of disaster that which he has already received in part without war and without bloodshed, showing no respect for the gods by whom he has often sworn, and counting as worthless the labors you performed on our joint behalf with such courage and devotion to duty. 4. In what you accomplished, he also had a share, and he would have had an even greater share of the honor you gained for us both if he had only kept his word. For, just as it is unfair to initiate wrong actions, so also it is cowardly to make no defense against unjust treatment. Now when we took the field against Niger, we had reasons for our hostility, not entirely logical, perhaps, but inevitable. We did not hate him because he had seized the empire after it was already ours, but rather each one of us, motivated by an equal desire for glory, sought the empire for himself alone, when it was still in dispute and lay prostrate before all. 5. But Albinus has violated his pledges and broken his oaths, and although he received from me that which a man normally gives only to his son, he has chosen to be hostile rather than friendly and belligerent instead of peaceful. And just as we were generous to him previously and showered fame and honor upon him, so let us now punish him with our arms for his treachery and cowardice. 6. His army, small and island-bred, will not stand against your might. For you, who by your valor and readiness to act on your own behalf have been victorious in many battles and have gained control of the entire East, how can you fail to emerge victorious with the greatest of ease when you have so large a number of allies and when virtually the entire army is here. Whereas they, by contrast, are few in number and lack a brave and competent general to lead them. 7. Who does not know Albinus' effeminate nature? Who does not know that his way |88 of life has prepared him more for the chorus than for the battlefield? Let us therefore go forth against him with confidence, relying on our customary zeal and valor, with the gods as our allies, gods against whom he has acted impiously in breaking his oaths, and let us be mindful of the victories we have won, victories which that man ridicules.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book 3, Chapter 6.

Life , God , Hate , Hostility

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

Hunger , War , People , Truth

“Capitalism is commodity production at the highest stage of development, when labor power itself becomes a commodity. The growth of internal exchange, and particularly of international exchange, is a special feature of capitalism. The uneven and spasmodic character of the development of individual enterprises, of individual branches of industry and individual countries, is inevitable under the capitalist system.”

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

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Four, "The Export of Capital"

Country

“I wanted to be an actor or be a director since I was a very small child. I mean, my mother went into labor at a movie theater. There were, like, four movie theaters around us when I was growing up in Austin. Movies became my babysitter. I think I saw more films than I saw reality. Then I noticed something when I was in my late teens that really made my thinking shift in what I wanted to do with film. When I was watching a film as a young man, there would be a second or two when I drifted outside of myself. I noticed how for a moment, in the image and music and train of information, I was traveling through the film, leaving myself. And I knew that was something I wanted to do. I wanted to see how long I could make that feeling go on—if I could take someone outside themselves, outside their body for a minute, five minutes, maybe even 80 minutes, 90 minutes.”

Tobe Hooper (1943–2017) American film director, screenwriter and producer

Tobe Hooper Interview http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/tobe-hooper/#_ (July 14, 2014)

Music , Travel , Feeling , Thinking

“The Labor Party is not going to profit from having these proven unsuccessful people around who are frightened of their own shadow and won't get out of bed in the morning unless they've had a focus group report to tell them which side of bed to get out.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

On the modern ALP, Lateline interview, June 7 2007.

People

“When I eat a meal, I think of all the people whose labor has contributed to my nourishment, and that thought nourishes my appreciation. I hope it nourishes you too.”

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

Interview by Jonathan Robinson (1994)

People , Hope , Thinking

“We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily…We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Wrestling with Zion, pp. 14-15.

Life , People , Mountain , Understanding

“[.. feel interested in] Things that are not overworked, that are in essence light. In other words, the great Cezannes that are not all filled in.... while I can recognize a master piece that is heavily painted or darkly painted or painted in layers as great and sublime, it would not be my choice to hang a - [inaudible] - for five years if I could instead perhaps have a Cezanne of the kind I just described. Or a certain kind of Matisse. Or one of those large Rubens sketches, where the first breath of feeling is the picture, rather than the labor and the gift.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about 'light' paintings
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Feeling , Light , Painting

“Motion study is the science of eliminating wastefulness resulting from using unnecessary, ill-directed, and inefficient motions. The aim of motion study is to find and perpetuate the scheme of least waste methods of labor.
By its use we have revolutionized several of the trades. There is probably no art or trade that cannot have its output doubled by the application of the principles of motion study.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Primer of scientific management, 1912, p. 8

Art , Study , Science

“War may achieve a redistribution of resources, but labor, not war, creates wealth.”

Kenneth N. Waltz book Man, the State, and War

Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter VIII, Conclusion, p. 224

War , Wealth

“Our work, abiding, shall bring to us the endless glory with which God at last overpays the toils, even as now He overanswers the poor prayers of His laboring servants.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 131.

God

“Whenever the rate of return on capital is significantly and durably higher than the growth rate of the economy, it is all but inevitable that inheritance (of fortunes accumulated in the past) predominates over saving (wealth accumulated in the present). … The inequality r > g in one sense implies that the past tends to devour the future: wealth originating in the past automatically grows more rapidly, even without labor, than wealth stemming from work, which can be saved. Almost inevitably, this tends to give lasting disproportionate importance to inequalities created in the past, and therefore to inheritance.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 377.

Sense , Past , Future , Wealth

“Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labor owners … I believe in Gandhi’s philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded laborer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

"Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi Are Awarded Nobel Peace Prize" by Alan Cowell and Declan Walsh, in The New York Times (10 October 2014)

Religion , Help

“Scientific investigation is rapidly putting at our disposal vast amounts of knowledge concerning materials and forces, which it is the business of the engineer to utilize for the benefit of the community. Well-designed plants and efficiency labor-saving devices, to be seen on every hand, bear testimony that he is doing at least a portion of his work well. When, however, it comes to the operation of these plants and the utilization of these labor-saving devices, the lack of co-operation between employer and employee, and the inefficient utilization of labor, very much impair their efficiency. The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increased by proper study is, in most cases, so great as to be almost incredible.”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

Source: Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910, p. 13-14.

Communication , Business , Knowledge , Problem

“It is the secret scandal of capitalism that at no point has it been organized primarily around free labor.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 350

Secret

“What self-righteous persons take to themselves, is the same work that Christ was engaged in when He was in His agony and bloody sweat, and when He died on the cross, which was the greatest thing that ever the eyes of angels beheld. Christ could accomplish other parts of this work without cost; but this part cost Him His life, as well as innumerable pains and labors. Yet this is the part which self-righteous persons go about to accomplish for themselves.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 541.

Life , Pain , Angels , Christ

“I find from experience both with government agencies and with private business that there are striking differences. One of those differences is that, in government, there is more continuity and definition in the mandate. The limits of action are often clearly defined. in many cases by Congress. No such situation exists in large private business. Dimock says bureaucracies are related, for example, to size. Yet he points out some bearings on bureaucracies of the inadequacies in our federal civil service system and the conflict of loyalties which arises out of it. This, he states, he succeeded in overcoming. I have had contact with several war agencies made up mainly of businessmen. These men rapidly took on bureaucratic characteristics radically different from their own behavior in private life. The only close parallels I find in the areas of private business to the deadening effects of the present civil service are, on the one hand, what one of my old labor leaders used to call the "sonority" system and, on the other, the very real problems faced by management in dealing with labor which arise immediately out of the prolonged governmental support for organized labor-which is in my judgment bad for labor.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "Governmental and Business Executives", 1946, p. 176; cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 194-5

Life , Men , War , Behavior

“In regard to creeds and faiths, the condition is no better, and no worse. Differences both as to race and to religion are evidently more likely to increase than to diminish. We stand between the populous shores of two great oceans. Our land is capable of supporting one-fifth of all the globe. Here, labor is abundant and better renumerated than any where else. All moral, social and geographical causes conspire to bring to us the peoples of all other over populated countries.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

People , Faith , Religion , Support

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus

God , Mountain

“he [agent Daly] conducts his office as being a whole Dominion Government, Indian Agent, Indian Cheif and Council, all into one … the Agent appears as taking too much advantage of his powers over the Chief and council and causing a considerable strife an [animosity] amoung the Indians of this Reserve … foiling the labors of the chief and members of the council, discrediting those who assist to maintain good government of the Band.”

Francis Pegahmagabow (1891–1952) World War I sniper

[harv, Brownlie, Robin, A fatherly eye: Indian agents, government power, and Aboriginal resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939, 2003, 2003, University of Toronto Press, 9780195417845], p. 153

Appearance

“At the end of the Civil War, the "Slave Power" had been destroyed, free-labor Republicanism was triumphant, and the freed slave was poised on the verge of assuming an equal place in American society with every other citizen. Fifteen years later, the one-time slaveholders were back in control of the South, free-labor Republicanism was coping with the first stresses of mass industrialization in its own Northern backyard, and the freedmen were consigned to an economic peonage that offered little practical improvement on enslavement. It began to seem that a great opportunity had been bobbled away.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Sara Gabbard (2018)

War , Time

“In November 1944 the Nazi authorities finally decided to deport my labor unit from Budapest to an Austrian concentration camp, where most of my comrades eventually perished. But I was lucky enough to make my escape from the railway station in Budapest, just before our train left for Austria. Then a Jesuit father I had known gave me refuge in the cellar of their monastery.”

John Harsanyi (1920–2000) hungarian economist

"John C. Harsanyi - Biographical," 1994

Training

Quotes about labor page 3

Quotes about labor
page 3