Quotes about work
page 69

Donald J. Trump photo

“I know nothing about Russia. I know — I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, October, Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016)

Andrew Sega photo

“Unfortunately Sting's jazz work isn't nearly as inventive as his rock songs.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

Gloria Estefan photo
Herman Kahn photo
Henry M. Leland photo

“The teams at times could go but a short distance every day. In bad weather at night there would be as many as 150 horses at one of the small frame inns which were not more than five or eight miles apart. Each driver had to care for his eight horses, feed, clean, card, harness and unharness. For all this work my father received the wages of $15 per month.”

Henry M. Leland (1843–1932) American businessman

Source: Master of Precision: Henry M. Leland, 1966, p. 20; Lelands father was farmer and drove an eight-horse wagon between Boston and Montreal. Leland gave a description of the working conditions of those drivers.

Gail Levin photo

“By definition, a catalogue raissonne employs methodical scholarship to gather and digest in systematic form all that can be known of an artist's work and life. In short the evidence of his intellectual and cultural life.”

Gail Levin (1948) art historian

Introduction -'Edward Hopper-an intimate biography' University of California Press, Berkeley, 1995 ISBN 0520214757

Winston S. Churchill photo
Gerrit Benner photo

“When you paint outdoors, you work from your feet up to above your head. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Gerrit Benner (1897–1981) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Gerrit Benner, in het Nederlands:) Als je buiten werkt, dan werk je vanaf je voeten tot boven je hoofd.
Quote of Gerrit Benner, c. 1950-1955, in a talk with nl:Willem den Ouden; as cited in the thesis by Leo Delfgauw, University of Groningen, 2017, p 221 https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/48348912/Complete_thesis.pdf
1950 - 1980

David Gerrold photo

“I’ve always suspected that Judas was the most faithful of the apostles, and that his betrayal of Jesus was not a betrayal at all, simply a test to prove that Christ could not be betrayed. The way I see it, Judas hoped and expected that Christ would have worked some kind of miracle and turned away those soldiers when they came for him. Or perhaps he would not die on the cross. Or perhaps—well, never mind. In any case, Jesus didn’t do any of these things, probably because he was not capable of it. You see, I’ve also always believed that Christ was not the son of God, but just a very very good man, and that he had no supernatural powers at all, just the abilities of any normal human being. When he died, that’s when Judas realized that he had not been testing God at all—he’d been betraying a human being, perhaps the best human being. Judas’s mistake was in wanting too much to believe in the powers of Christ. He wanted Christ to demonstrate to everyone that he was the son of God, and he believed his Christ could do it—only his Christ wasn’t the son of God and couldn’t do it, and he died. You see, it was Christ who betrayed Judas—by promising what he couldn’t deliver. And Judas realized what he had done and hung himself. That’s my interpretation of it, Auberson—not the traditional, I’ll agree, but it has more meaning to me. Judas’s mistake was in believing too hard and not questioning first what he thought were facts. I don’t intend to repeat that mistake.”

Section 37 (p. 216)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

Gloria Estefan photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“Animals are robots that work. Toons are simply robots without hard bodies.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

W. Edwards Deming photo
Pappus of Alexandria photo
Adam Smith photo
Terence V. Powderly photo

“Individually, workingmen are weak, and, when separated, each one follows a different course, without accomplishing anything for himself or his fellow man; but when combined in one common bond of brotherhood, they become as the cable, each strand of which, though weak and insignificant enough in itself, is assisted and strengthened by being joined with others, and the work that one could not perform alone is easily accomplished by a combination of strands.”

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

"The Organization of Labor," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Organization%20of%20Labor;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0122;idno=nora0135-2;node=nora0135-2%3A2 North American Review, vol. 135, no. 2, whole no. 309 (Aug. 1882), pp. 119.

Tom Hanks photo
Michael Faraday photo

“The secret is comprised in three words — Work, finish, publish.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

His well-known advice to the young William Crookes, who had asked him the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, as quoted in Michael Faraday (1874) by John Hall Gladstone, p. 123

E. W. Howe photo

“Abusing the prosperous in order to curry the favor of the envious, is an old game that still works better than it should.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p199.

Jean Metzinger photo

“Instead of copying Nature, we [ Cubists ] create a 'milieu', of our own, wherein our sentiment can work itself out through a juxtaposition of colors. It is hard to explain it, but it may perhaps be illustrated by analogy of literature and music. Your [ Gelett Burgess is American] Edgar Poe did not attempt to reproduce Nature realistically. Some phase of life suggested an emotion, as that of horror in 'The Fall of the House of Ushur.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

That subjective idea he translated into art. He made a composition of it.
Quote of Metzinger in 'The Wild Men of Paris', by Gelett Burgess https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf, in 'The Architectural Record, Vol XXVII, May 1910, p. 413

Marcus Orelias photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Vyasa photo

“It is in the best interest of a man to become a Karma-Yogi and work to the best of his abilities and without bothering about the results.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

Sources, Veda Vyasa Maharshi

Ludwig Feuerbach photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
Linus Torvalds photo
Salman Khan photo
Carole Morin photo
John Bright photo
Rachel Maddow photo
Bernhard Riemann photo

“III. Thesis. A God working in Time. (Government of the world). Antithesis. A timeless, personal, omniscient, al-mighty, all-benevolent God”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Providence
Antimonies
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
John Banville photo
Nicholas Serota photo

“Earlier fundamental work of Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Whorf, etc., as well as my own attempt to use this earlier thinking as an epistemological base for psychiatric theory, led to a series of generalizations: That human verbal communication can operate and always does operate at many contrasting levels of abstraction. These range in two directions from the seemingly simple denotative level (“The cat is on the mat”). One range or set of these more abstract levels includes those explicit or implicit messages where the subject of discourse is the language. We will call these metalinguistic (for example, “The verbal sound ‘cat’ stands for any member of such and such class of objects”, or “The word, ‘cat’ has no fur and cannot scratch”). The other set of levels of abstraction we will call metacommunicative (e. g., “My telling you where to find the cat was friendly”, or “This is play”). In these, the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers. It will be noted that the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit; and also that, especially in the psychiatric interview, there occurs a further class of implicit messages about how metacommunicative messages of friendship and hostility are to be interpreted.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Gregory Bateson (1955) " A theory of play and fantasy http://sashabarab.com/syllabi/games_learning/bateson.pdf". In: Psychiatric research reports, 1955. pp. 177-178] as cited in: S.P. Arpaia (2011) " Paradoxes, circularity and learning processes http://www2.units.it/episteme/L&PS_Vol9No1/L&PS_Vol9No1_2011_18b_Arpaia.pdf". In: L&PS – Logic & Philosophy of Science, Vol. IX, No. 1, 2011, pp. 207-222

Paul Klee photo

“The harbor and city.... were behind us [Klee's first glimpse of Tunis], slightly hidden. First, we passed down a long canal. On shore, very close, our first Arabs. The sun has a dark power. The colorful clarity on shore full of promise. Macke too feels it. We both know that we shall work well here.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note, 7 April 1914; as quoted by June Taboroff, on 'AramcoWorld', May, June 1991 http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199103/travels.in.tunisia.htm
1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Bill Bryson photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.”

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

Bk. III, ch. 11.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Joseph Beuys photo
Gordon B. Hinckley photo
William Thomson photo

“It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects. [Footnote: ] If this axiom be denied for all temperatures, it would have to be admitted that a self-acting machine might be set to work and produce mechanical effect by cooling the sea or earth, with no limit but the total loss of heat from the earth and sea, or in reality, from the whole material world.”

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=nWMSAAAAIAAJ p. 179 (1882) "On the Dynamical Theory of Heat with Numerical Results Deduced from Mr Joule's Equivalent of a Thermal Unit and M. Regnault's Observations on Steam" originally from Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, March, 1851 and Philosophical Magazine iv, 1852
Thermodynamics quotes

Bon Scott photo
Nikki Haley photo

“Everything that's working, we're going to make it better, everything that's not working we're going to try and fix, and anything that seems to be obsolete and not necessary we're going to away with.”

Nikki Haley (1972) US ambassador to the United Nations

New US envoy warns allies:'Back us or we'll take names' http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-28/new-us-un-envoy-warns-allies-back-us-or-well-take-names/8219532 (January 28 2017)

Odilo Globocnik photo
Julian of Norwich photo
James McNeill Whistler photo

“Yes, madam, Nature is creeping up. [in response to a lady who said that a landscape reminded her of his work]”

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

D.C. Seitz, Whistler Stories (1913)
posthumous published

Lyndall Urwick photo
Robert P. George photo
John Ralston Saul photo

“[Scientists whose work has no clear, practical implications would want to make their decisions considering such things as:] the relative worth of (1) more observations, (2) greater scope of his conceptual model, (3) simplicity, (4) precision of language, (5) accuracy of the probability assignment.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Costs, Utilities, and Values, Sections I and II. (1956), p. 248 as cited in: Douglas, H.E. (2009) Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal

Plutarch photo
Nancy Pelosi photo

“I say to my colleagues never confine your best work, your hopes, your dreams, the aspiration of the American people to what will be signed by George W. Bush because that is too limiting a factor.”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

[Associated Press, House Dems face uphill battle to end Iraq war, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17534366/, MSNBC.com, March 8, 2007, 2007-03-09]
2000s

Phillip Guston photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Ayn Rand photo
Maneka Gandhi photo

“We are changing the law and I am personally working on it to bring 16-year-olds into the purview. According to the police, 50 per cent of the crimes are committed by 16-year-olds who know the Juvenile Justice Act. But now for premeditated murder, rape, if we bring them into the purview of the adult world, then it will scare them.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On the Juvenile Justice Act, as quoted in "Juveniles who commit rape should be tried as adults: Maneka Gandhi" http://ibnlive.in.com/news/juveniles-who-commit-rape-should-be-tried-as-adults-maneka-gandhi/485770-37-64.html, IBNLive (14 July 2014)
2011-present

Kazuo Ishiguro photo
Gene Wolfe photo

“Almost any interesting work of art comes close to saying the opposite of what it really says.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"What I Know About Writing (in no particular order)", as quoted in Michael Swanwick, "The Wolf in the Labyrinth", Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2007
Nonfiction

George William Russell photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Letter to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald (July 1938)
Quoted, Letters

Marsden Hartley photo

“My work embodies little visions of the great intangible.... Some will say he’s gone mad – others will look and say he’s looked in at the lattices of Heaven and come back with the madness of splendor on him.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to Seumus O'Sheel, October 10, 1908, Hartley Archive, Archives of American Art; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 25
1908 - 1920

Roger Waters photo
Edward Jenks photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo

“What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples – in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 164 : quote from Renoir's letter to Durand-Ruell, 1882, referring to a small painting with trees of the landscape-painter Corot

David Ricardo photo

“Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

The High Price of Bullion (1810) http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/bullion

Douglas Coupland photo
Edward Teller photo
Leonid Hurwicz photo

“There were times when other people said I was on the short list, but as time passed and nothing happened, I didn’t expect the recognition would come because people who were familiar with my work were slowly dying off.”

Leonid Hurwicz (1917–2008) Russian-American economist and mathematician

Quoted in: William Grimes, " Leonid Hurwicz, Nobel Economist, Dies at 90 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/business/26hurwicz.html?_r=0" at nytimes.com, June 26, 2008.

John Burroughs photo
John Danforth photo
Thorstein Veblen photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“Lord, oh Lord, will I return to you once, being a genuine artist. Will all those Art lovers once behold my works with reverence and the laurel of Art then adorn my head... I experience so ardently all the beauty of my noble career... And once again I call to you, it would be much better not to live at all than being disappointed in my feeling.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch text: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit de brief van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): God God zal ik nog eenmaal als een waarachtig kunstenaar tot u keeren. Zullen nog eenmaal al die Kunstminnaren mijne werken met eerbied aanschouwen en de lauwer der Kunst mijn schedel sieren.. .Ik voel zo vurig al het schoone mijner edele loopbaan.. .Ach nogmaals roep ik tot u, laat mij veel liever niet leven dan in mijne gevoelen teleurgesteld te worden.
In a letter of Jozef Israels from Amsterdam, 16 July 1843, to his friend in Groningen, pharmacist Essingh; from RKD: Archive, A.S. Kok, The Hague
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Archibald Hill photo

“In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but alos, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1960, Cap 1. Scepticism and Faith, p. 41)

Friedrich Engels photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“[Marx was] the magnificent philosopher of working class violence.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted by Mussolini in From George Sorel: Essays in Socialism and Philosophy by John L. Stanley (1987) p. 4.
Undated

Ernest Flagg photo
Michelle Obama photo
Don DeLillo photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo

“They rightly adminish us that Christ taught that our speech should be Yea, Yea, and Nay, Nayl yet they do not seem to me to understand it clearly, or if they do understand it to obeu it. For though in many places they should often have said Yea, it has never been Yea. When those leaders were banished, against whom we wrote as best we could, and asked for an oath they would not reply except to the effect that through the faith which they had in God they knew they would never return, and yet they soon returned. 'The Father,' each said, 'led me back through His will.' I know very well that it was the father - of lies who led them back; but they pretend to know it was the Heavenly Father. Here is something worth telling: when that George (whom they call a second Paul) of the House of Jacob [Blaurock], was cudgelled with rods among us even to the infernal gate and was asked by an officer of the Council to take oath and lift up his hands [in affirmation], he at first refused, as he had often done before and had persisted in doing. Indeed he had always said that he would rather die than take an oath. The officer of the Council then ordered him forthwith to lift his hands and make oath at once, 'or do you, policemen,' he said, 'lead him to prison.' But now persuaded by rods this George of the House of Jacob raised his hand to heven and followed the magistrate in the recitation of the aoth. So here you have the question confronting you, Catabaptists, whether that Pail of yours did or did not transgress the law. The law forbids to sweat about the least thing: he swore, so he transgressed the law. Hence this knot is knit: You would be speerated from the world, from lies, from those who walk not according to the resurection of Christ but in dead works? How then is it that you have not excommunicated that Apostate? Your Yea is not Yea with you nor your Nay, Nay, but the contrary; your Yea is Nay and your Nay, Yea. You follow neither Christ nor your own constitution.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

As quoted in ibid, p. 263-264

Norman Mailer photo
Manuel Castells photo
Howard Dean photo
Jay Gould photo

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”

Jay Gould (1836–1892) American businessman

Frequently attributed, often in the context of strikebreaking activities during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. See for example Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 2‎ - Page 50 (1975). A contemporary source has not been identified. Varying forms of the quotation circulated in the labor press as early as 1893, with or without the attribution to Gould.
Attributed

George Santayana photo

“The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Giorgio de Santillana (1902-1974) The Crime of Galileo http://books.google.com/books?id=34uQ6tlYHRgC&q=%22The+working+of+great+administrations+is+mainly+the+result+of+a+vast+mass+of+routine+petty+malice+self-interest+carelessness+and+sheer+mistake+Only+a+residual+fraction+is+thought%22&pg=PA290#v=onepage (1958)
Many sources mistakenly attribute this quote to Santayana, and one http://books.google.com/books?id=e4tzpkw4caAC&q=%22The+working+of+great+institutions+is+mainly+the+result+of+a+vast+mass+of+routine+petty+malice+self-interest+carelessness+and+sheer+mistake+Only+a+residual+fraction+is+thought%22&pg=PA283#v=onepage even identifies the correct book, without realizing that George Santayana and Giorgio de Santillana are two different people
Misattributed