Quotes about work
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“Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.”

David Ogilvy (1911–1999) Advertising executive

“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary… to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

As quoted in Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion (1958) by Millard Dale Baughman, p. 69
1950s

Age, Learning, Childhood, Falseness

“Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: The Home and the World

Feeling, Freedom

“Why can't you place a blessing like that on us?" I asked.

"It only works on wild animals."

"So it would only affect Percy," Annabeth reasoned.

"Hey!" I protested.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Animals

“I place this day, my life, my loved ones, my work in the Lord's hands. There is no harm in the Lord's hands, only good. Whatever happens, whatever results, if I am in the Lord's hands it is the Lord's will and it is good.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

Love, Life

“Did you ever see anybody so disgusting: said lightning to thunder, "never," growled thunder, "let's give him the works.”

William Steig Shrek!

Source: Shrek!

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

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

“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, then complain he's not the man she married?”

Barbra Streisand (1942) American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and director

Anniversary, Change

“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Art

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

God, Memory, Past, Future

“Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

Problem

“People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

People, Truth, Time

“The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. V: Of the Wings of Atalanta

Truth, Thinking

“And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.'
Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?'
Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies… it’s just a word.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Life, Thinking

“Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

Chuck Close (1940–2021) American artist

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

Life

“Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves.
But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964) Spanish writer

Women

“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

For women

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

People

“You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: The Funny Thing Is...

Books, Idea, Time

“I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

God, Fools

“My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Love

“How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it is liking one felt, or disliking?”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

People, Thinking

“Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Life, Secret, Soul

“There's nothing militant about Jesus. I don't read anything like that in any of the gospels. Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant's ear, and Jesus said, "Put back thy sword, Peter." But Peter has had his sword out and at work ever since.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

Reading

“‎A change of work is the best rest.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

Change

“Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity… and here I am, reborn.”

Witold Gombrowicz book Ferdydurke

Source: Ferdydurke

Stupidity, Perfection

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Life, Faith, Religion, Effort

“Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.”

Sharon Creech (1945) American writer of children's novels

Reading

“People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Life, People, Learning

“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Back To Work, Life

“The key is never, never work. Nothing is more aging than work. It's not only the strain of getting up in the morning for work, but it's the resentment that settles on your face”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

Age

“A great friendship was like a great work of art, he thought. It took time and attention, and a spark of something that was impossible to describe. It was a happy, lucky accident, finding some kindred part of yourself in a total stranger.”

Elise Broach Masterpiece

Source: Masterpiece

Friendship, Art, Time, Parting

“For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress -- to the future.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

World, Future

“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

"The Self-Attribution Fallacy" http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/, 7 November 2011.

Wealth

“Why, look at me. I've worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Way

“Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you've changed, by believing. Once you've changed, other things start to follow. Isn't that the way it works?”

Diane Duane book So You Want to Be a Wizard

Source: So You Want to Be a Wizard

Way, Universe, Change

“If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the believing-muscles of your mind, and then you'll be so weak you won't be able to believe the simplest true things.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.”

Terry Pratchett book The Truth

Source: The Truth

Way

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Wendung (Turning Point), as translated by Stephen Mitchell

Heart

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, God, People, World

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”

August Wilson (1945–2005) American playwright

Courageous, Angels, Forgiveness, Singing

“Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: One Way Street And Other Writings

Music

“I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Anecdote recorded as something that Lincoln said in a conversation with educator Newman Bateman in the Autumn of 1860, in Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866) by Josiah Gilbert Holland, Chapter XVI, p. 287
Posthumous attributions
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God.
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God’s help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright.

God, Hate, Thinking

“All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Builders

The Builders.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fate, Time

“Miracle Max: Have fun stormin' da castle.
Valerie: Think it'll work?
Miracle Max: It would take a miracle.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Thinking

“Government works best under the glare of public scrutiny. Absent such scrutiny, abuses occur.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

“Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.”

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

Remarks at the Annual Salute to Congress Dinner http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/20481b.htm (4 February 1981) <br class="br">1980s, First term of office (1981–1985) <br class="br">Variant: Thomas Jefferson once said, "We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works." And ever since he told me that I stopped worrying. <br class="br">Context: Thomas Jefferson made a comment about the Presidency and age. He said that one should not worry about one's exact chronological age in reference to his ability to perform one's task. And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

Age

“Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you've never been hurt.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Love, Money, Dance, Hurt

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).

Misattributed

Back To Work

“It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Time

“If you hear a voice within you saying, "You are not a painter," then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working. He who goes to trends and tells his troubles when he feels like that loses part of his manliness, part of the best that's in him; your friends can only be those who themselves struggle against it, who raise your activity by their own example of action.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Oct. 1883, 'Van Gogh's Letters', http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/13/336.htm <br class="br">1880s, 1883

Feeling, Boy, Silence, Parting

“The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Art

“The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Source: All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day

Love, People

“Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.”

John Dewey book Democracy and Education

Source: Democracy and Education

Education

“This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Love, Money, Family, Parting

“One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.”

Neil Young book Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Source: Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Men, World, Faith, Travel

“I can tell you that solitude
Is not all exaltation, inner space
Where the soul breathes and work can be done.
Solitude exposes the nerve,
Raises up ghosts.
The past, never at rest, flows through it.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Soul, Solitude, Past

“When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Time

“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing”

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

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)
Context: Among ourselves we differ in many qualities of body, head, and heart; we are unequally developed, mentally as well as physically. But each of us has the right to ask that he shall be protected from wrong-doing as he does his work and carries his burden through life. No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing; and this is a prize open to every man, for there can be no better worth doing than that done to keep in health and comfort and with reasonable advantages those immediately dependent upon the husband, the father, or the son. There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler, for the man or the woman whose object it is throughout life to shirk the duties which life ought to bring. Life can mean nothing worth meaning, unless its prime aim is the doing of duty, the achievement of results worth achieving.

Business, Powerful, Back To Work, Life

“Daja: "He and Rosethorn work together? They hate each other."
Lark: "I didn't say they liked it.
- Daja and Lark referring to Rosethorn and Crane's cooperation on finding the cures for new diseases”

Tamora Pierce Briar's Book

Source: Briar's Book

Hate, Disease

“Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Peaceful, Peace, History, Thinking

“You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Source: Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Ch. 11.

“It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Art

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Way, Thinking, Suffering, Time

“Workers work hard enough to not be fired, and owners pay just enough so that workers won't quit.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threating to destroy the Social and the Political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people, is not simply some romantic dream, or a proverb in a dusty book, that we read, just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea of which founded our nation and has guided us in our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else. We've always believed in a thing called, progress. We've always had a faith, that the days of our children, would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith. Fopr the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe, that the next five years, will be worse than the past five years. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor, unitl the shock of Watergate. We've got to stop crying and start sweating. Stop talking and start walking. Working together, with our common faith, we cannot fail.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Children, People, Books, Faith

“… I draw on the work of Piaget (1968) in identifying conflict as the harbinger of growth and also on the work of Erikson (1964) who, in charting development through crisis, demonstrates how a heightened vulnerability signals the emergence of a potential strength, creating a dangerous opportunity for growth, "a turning point for better or worse" (p. 139).”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Drawing

“A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Star

“He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spent ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air everyday.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

People, Age, Holiday

“Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

God, People, Business, Thinking

“There is no greater thing you can do with your life and your work than follow your passions – in a way that serves the world and you.”

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

Powerful, Life, World, Way

“… the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Way, Intelligence, Future

“Last hopeless chances have got to work. Nothing makes sense otherwise. You might as well not be alive.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

Sense, Chance

“If you work really hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

“The absolutist begins a work, others take it up and try to spread it. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

As quoted in Women on War : Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age (1988), by Daniela Gioseffi, p. 103
Variant: A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do.
As quoted in Singing the Living Tradition (1993) by the Unitarian Universalist Association, p. 560
Context: What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. Going to jail for distributing leaflets advocating war tax refusal causes a ripple of thought, of conscience among us all. And of remembrance too. …. There may be ever improving standards of living in the U. S., with every worker eventually owning his own home and driving his own car; but our modern economy is based on preparation for war. … The absolutist begins a work, others take it up and try to spread it. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

Problem

“When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

“Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Love, Silence

“The artist works by locating the world in himself”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

World

“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”

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

Leadership, People

“A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.”

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

People, Sense, Personality

“Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Truth, History, Reading

“When a man says to me, 'Let us work together in the great cause you have undertaken, and let me be your companion and aid, for I admire you more than I have ever admired any other woman,' then I shall say, 'I am yours truly'; but he must ask me to be his equal, not his slave.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

“Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.”

C.G. Jung book Psychological Types

Source: Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of Individuation (1921), Ch. 1, p. 82
Context: The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth.

Imagination, Birth