Quotes about shoemaker
A collection of quotes on the topic of shoemaker, shoe, shoes, making.
Quotes about shoemaker

His reply to a shoe manufacturer who had asked why Miller's job should be subsidized when his was not, as recounted at a London press conference. The Guardian (25 January 1990)

The Autobiography of Mark Twain (1959 edition, edited by Charles Neider).

“If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker.”
According to The Quote Verifier (2006) by Ralph Keyes, Einstein never said any such thing. (According to p. 285 of the book's "source notes" Keyes checked New Statesman 16 April 1965, which is commonly cited as the source of this quote. Some other books claim it is from New Statesman 16 April 1955 and at least one has it as 1945, but a Google Books search http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?num=10&q=einstein+watchmaker+%22new+statesman%22 with the date range restricted to 1900-1995 shows that all the earliest sources give it as 1965. This includes the earliest source located, The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations from 1971, as can be verified by this search http://www.google.com/search?q=%22of+his+making+the+atom+bomb+possible.+quoted+in+new+statesman%2C+16+april+1965%22&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1.) Keyes notes that Einstein "did use similar words to make a very different point" when he wrote, in a 1954 letter to the editor at The Reporter magazine, "If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances."
Similarly, in Einstein and the Poet by William Hermanns, p. 86 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA86#v=onepage&q&f=false, Einstein is quoted saying the following in a 1948 interview: "If I should be born again, I will become a cobbler and do my thinking in peace."
Misattributed
Variant: If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.

“Elegance should be left to shoemakers and tailors”
Eleganz sei die Sache der Schuster und Schneider
reported by [Arnold Berliner, Curt Thesing, Die Naturwissenschaften, Springer-Verlag, 1946, 36]
also reported by [Albert Einstein, translation by Robert W. Lawson, Relativity, Plain Label Books, 1921, 1-603-03164-2, preface]
Attributed

54 Iphicrates
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders
Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

“Who is worse shod than the shoemaker's wife?”
Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Who is wurs shod, than the shoemakers wyfe,
With shops full of shoes all hir lyfe?

'Is Photography a Failure?', Alfred Stieglitz, 'Sun: 5.', March 14, 1922; as quoted on Wikipedia

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

“We are not for making shoes, so shoemakers can have jobs, but so we can have shoes.”

John R. Commons, "American shoemakers, 1648-1895: A sketch of industrial evolution." The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1909): 39-84.

StrengthsFinder 2.0, 2007
Source: Tom Rath, "The Fallacy Behind the American Dream," Business Journal, Feb. 8, 2007 (Excerpted from StrengthsFinder 2.0)

On the Old Man of the Mountain

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: Every physician, shoemaker, mechanic or educator must know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and make his living. For some decades, you have begun to play a governing role on this earth. It is on your thinking and your actions that the future of humanity depends. But your teachers and masters do not tell you how you really think and are; nobody dares to voice the one criticism of you which could make you capable of governing your own fate. You are "free" only in one sense: free from education in governing your life yourself, free from self-criticism.

“Who is wurs shod, than the shoemakers wyfe,
With shops full of shoes all hir lyfe?”
Who is worse shod, than the shoemakers wife,
With shops full of shoes all her life?
Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546)