Quotes about work
page 78

Ray Bradbury photo
Frederic G. Kenyon photo
Adolphe Quetelet photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Fernand Léger photo
Joe Satriani photo
Ramachandra Guha photo

“In the generation (or two generations) before mine, the leading Indian historians (judged in terms of scholarly books and papers written and read) included Irfan Habib, R. S. Sharma, Ranajit Guha, Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Amalendu Guha, Sumit Sarkar, and Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, all of whom were influenced to a lesser or greater degree by Marxism; and Ashin Dasgupta, Dharma Kumar, Parthasarathy Gupta, Amales Tripathi, Rajat Kanta Rai, Mushirul Hasan, and Tapan Roychowdhury, all of whom were liberals. The leading political scientists included the liberals Rajni Kothari, Basheeruddin Ahmed and Ramashray Ray; the Marxists Javed Alam and Partha Chatterjee; and Ashis Nandy, an admirer of Tagore and Gandhi who like them stoutly resists being classified in conventional terms. The pre-eminent sociologists of that generation were M. N. Srinivas and André Béteille, both of whom would own the label ‘liberal’; and T. N. Madan, who while working on classically conservative themes such as family, kinship and religion would most likely see himself as a liberal too. Even the best-known or most influential economists of the 1960s and 1970 tended to be on the left of the spectrum, as the names of K. N. Raj, Amartya Sen, V. M. Dandekar, Amit Bhaduri, Krishna Bharadwaj, Pranab Bardhan, Prabhat and Utsa Patnaik, and Ashok Rudra (among others) signify.”

Ramachandra Guha (1958) historian and writer from India

[Guha, Ramachandra, Where Are The Conservative Intellectuals in India?, http://ramachandraguha.in/archives/where-are-the-conservative-intellectuals-in-india-caravan.html, Caravan, March 2015]

Osama bin Laden photo
William Wordsworth photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“For with what eyes of the mind was your Plato able to see that workhouse of such stupendous toil, in which he makes the world to be modelled and built by God? What materials, what bars, what machines, what servants, were employed in so vast a work? How could the air, fire, water, and earth, pay obedience and submit to the will of the architect? From whence arose those five forms, of which the rest were composed, so aptly contributing to frame the mind and produce the senses? It is tedious to go through all, as they are of such a sort that they look more like things to be desired than to be discovered.”
Quibus enim oculis animi intueri potuit vester Plato fabricam illam tanti operis, qua construi a deo atque aedificari mundum facit; quae molitio, quae ferramenta, qui vectes, quae machinae, qui ministri tanti muneris fuerunt; quem ad modum autem oboedire et parere voluntati architecti aer, ignis, aqua, terra potuerunt; unde vero ortae illae quinque formae, ex quibus reliqua formantur, apte cadentes ad animum afficiendum pariendosque sensus? Longum est ad omnia, quae talia sunt, ut optata magis quam inventa videantur.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book I, section 19
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

John R. Bolton photo
Auguste Rodin photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“Work, spirituality, family, friendships, health--you can't ignore any of them or it'll get you in the end.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Chapter 15, p. 268
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

John R. Commons photo
Kent Hovind photo
Masaru Ibuka photo

“We worked furiously (to realise our goals). Because we didn't have fear, we could do something drastic.”

Masaru Ibuka (1908–1997) Japanese businessman

Masaru Ibuka cited in: Ashley Goldsworthy (2009), Leadership in Action. p. 52

Robert J. Sawyer photo
Annie Besant photo
Syd Barrett photo
Hans Freudenthal photo
Louis C.K. photo
Joseph Joubert photo

“Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
George Dantzig photo
Aron Ra photo
Ambrose Bierce photo

“The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 361

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan photo
Gulzarilal Nanda photo

“I had seen him [Mahatama Gandhi] from a distance This was going to be the first personal contact. As I ascended the stairs of Manibahavan…I was feeling the thrill of anticipation of a great event. I entered the room and the awe which the scene inside inspired in my heart has not been erased from my memory. I sat in front of the Mahatma…After a while Gandhiji turned to me and asked me about the work that I was doing…He then inquired about my situation. Would I have to face any difficulties if I came away to join the movement? I reflected for a few fleeting moments. I asked myself…How can an army like this function if every soldier who is recruited has to place his personal difficulties before the General. I replied to him that I had no problems for his consideration. Then an interesting conversation followed. Lala Lajpat Rai took up the thread and asked Gandhiji to permit me to proceed to the Punjab, the place of my origin and join him, in the work of the movement there. Thereafter Shankarlal Banker put forward the argument that since my political birth was in Bombay I should stick to this place. The Mahatma gave his verdict in favour of Bombay and thus the interview ended. I found that Bunker was the key figure in the organization in Bombay then and a number of activities were being carried out under his personal direction.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

In, p. 5-6
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

Carlo Beenakker photo

“… (a flash of insight) never comes by itself, in the sense that it comes effortless. You really need to work for it. There is a good proverb that says "fortuity helps the prepared mind." Insight will come by chance, but you only get it if you are prepared. Insight doesn't come by its own.”

Carlo Beenakker (1960) Dutch physicist

... (een flits van inzicht) komt nooit vanzelf, in de zin dat je er geen moeite voor hoeft te doen. Je moet je er echt wel voor inspannen. Er is een mooi spreekwoord voor: “toeval schiet de voorbereide geest te hulp”.
Zo’n inzicht komt wel toevallig, maar je krijgt het alleen als je bent voorbereid. Het inzicht komt niet vanzelf.
In Interview with Professor Carlo Beenakker. Interviewers: Ramy El-Dardiry and Roderick Knuiman (February 1, 2006).

Denise Scott Brown photo
Giorgio Vasari photo

“Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Often attributed to Giorgio Vasari, while in the text Vasari attributes these words to Leonardo da Vinci in: Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects as translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster (1852), Vol. 2;
Misattributed

Howard S. Becker photo
Hesiod photo

“The dawn speeds a man on his journey, and speeds him too in his work.”

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 579.

Tracey Ullman photo

“Every character I do is based on someone I know. I try to justify every sketch we do. If it's not working, we find someone to talk to who it has happened to.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

"Tracking Tracey" http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/ullman.htm (Interview, January 1989)

Lydia Maria Child photo

“I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Letter to Ellis Gray Loring (1843).
1840s

C. Wright Mills photo

“Here's to the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published and widely distributed in the Soviet Union. On that day the USSR will have achieved democracy!”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Mills was invited to speak in the Soviet Union as an honored guest, due to his criticisms of economies in the West; he was asked to make a toast at a banquet, and in his contrarian way, toasted Trotsky, whose works had been banned in the Soviet Union by Stalin. Reported in Saul Landau, "C. Wright Mills: The Last Six Months", Ramparts (August 1965), p. 49-50.
1960s

Madhuri Dixit photo
Paul Klee photo

“Tunis. My head is full of the impressions of last night's walk. Art-Nature-Self. Went to work at once and painted in watercolour in the Arab quarter. Began the synthesis of urban architecture and pictorial architecture. Not yet pure, but quite attractive, somewhat too much of the mood, the enthusiasm of traveling in it-the Self, in a word. Things will no doubt get more objective later, once the intoxication has worn off a bit.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note, 7 April 1914; # 926-f; as cited by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee Part Four', : Klee as an Expressionist and Constructivist Painter http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev27.html
The evening of their arrival, Dr. Jaggi took the 3 artists Klee, August Macke and Louis Moilliet on 'a nocturnal walk through the Arab city' Tunis. Klee wrote this note next day.
1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Seneca the Younger photo

“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of ourselves and our works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Letters to Lucilius, letter 91, page 294. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettres_%C3%A0_Lucilius/Lettre_91
Other works

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: General systemantics, an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., 1975, p. 65, cited in: Grady Booch (1991) Object oriented design with applications. p. 11

“The Golden Rule works like gravitation.”

Charles Fletcher Dole (1845–1927) Unitarian minister, speaker, and writer

Cleveland Address, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

Huston Smith photo

“I've grown up disciplined all my life as a dancer, so I know how to eat and work out. Do I do it? No!”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to E! News http://www.eonline.com/news/924125/erika-jayne-s-diet-and-fitness-secrets-may-surprise-you (2018)

Thorstein Veblen photo
Paul Gauguin photo
Patrick Pearse photo

“And let us make no mistake as to what Tone sought to do, what it remains to us to do. We need to restate our programme: Tone has stated it for us:
"To break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means."
I find here implicit all the philosophy of Irish nationalism, all the teaching of the Gaelic League and the later prophets. Ireland one and Ireland free—is not this the definition of Ireland a Nation? To that definition and to that programme we declare our adhesion anew; pledging ourselves as Tone pledged himself—and in this sacred place, by this graveside, let us not pledge ourselves unless we mean to keep our pledge—we pledge ourselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to rest either by day or night until his work be accomplished, deeming it the proudest of all privileges to fight for freedom, to fight not in despondency but in great joy hoping for the victory in our day, but fighting on whether victory seem near or far, never lowering our ideal, never bartering one jot or tittle of our birthright, holding faith to the memory and the inspiration of Tone, and accounting ourselves base as long as we endure the evil thing against which he testified with his blood.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

Address delivered at the Grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown Churchyard, Co. Kildare, 22 June 1913

“The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“An Unread Book”, p. 20
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Ernest Hemingway photo
Gustav Stresemann photo

“Let us celebrate Bismarck's memory by making the great idea of his life, devotion to the Fatherland, the guiding star of our own lives. Each of us in the place where he can do his best work. Each of us is responsible for helping the country rise again to that greatness for which Bismarck, who also knew an Olmuetz, prepared the way.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech (1 April 1928), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 417
1920s

Gloria Estefan photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“I have [drawings of] about twelve figures of diggers and men who are working in a potato field, and I wonder if I could not make something of it, you have still a few, for instance, a man who fills a bag with potatoes. Well, I do not know for sure, but sooner or later I shall accomplish that, for I looked at it so attentively this summer, and here in the dunes I could make a good study of the earth and the sky, and then boldly put in the figures.”

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

Quote in letter 169, from The Hague, January, 1882; as cited in Vincent van Gogh, Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, catalog-page: Dutch Period: - 4. Potato Diggers
1880s, 1882

Ilana Mercer photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Peter F. Drucker photo

“A superior who works on his own development sets an almost irresistible example.”

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

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 427

İsmail Enver photo

“All who seek to enrich those who do not work should be destroyed.”

İsmail Enver (1881–1922) Turkish military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution

Quoted in "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination" - Page 405 - by Ben Kiernan - Social Science - 2007.

Ilana Mercer photo

“But public works, economic protectionism, cheap money, 'deficit-financed government spending,' and 'the animal spirits of the spendthrift' in the service of boosting 'consumption demand'… Doesn't Keynesianism simply appeal to the worst in human nature?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"John Maynard Keynes: Where’s The Genius?! (Part 2) http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/08/john-maynard-keynes-wheres-genius-part-2.html Economic Policy Journal, August 23, 2013.
2010s, 2013

Calvin Coolidge photo
Hugo Diemer photo
Henry Morgenthau, Sr. photo
Aaron Copland photo

“I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.”

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) American composer, composition teacher, writer, and conductor

Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

Gino Severini photo

“[Severini characterized his approach to the importance of Divisionism for Futurism as].. a consequence of Neo-Impressionism (Seurat, Signac) and Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Degas.. [compared to that of his Milanese colleagues who works were] influenced by Jugendstil [and] a continuation of the Lombardian tradition of Segantini, Previati..”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 37; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 31

Lawrence Lessig photo
André Malraux photo
Francisco De Goya photo

“Since most of the subjects depicted in this work are not real, it is not unreasonable to hope that connoisseurs will readily overlook their defects.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

G. K. Chesterton photo
Diana, Princess of Wales photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Haruo Nakajima photo

“Mr. Kurosawa would spend an entire day filming one shot. None of the other directors with whom I worked would do that. Working with Mr. Kurosawa was like working on a play instead of a movie. We would spend a great deal of time rehearsing. It was torturous.”

Haruo Nakajima (1929–2017) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Haruo Nakajima Interview" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/nakajima.htm, Kaiju Conversations (March 1995)

George Peacock photo
Tommy Franks photo
Sudhir Ruparelia photo

“If I owned half of the buildings in Kampala, I'd probably be god. Reports of my property holdings are quite frankly, grossly exaggerated. I don't own half of Kampala as people suggest, but I own quite a lot. And I've worked very hard for it…”

Sudhir Ruparelia (1956) Ugandan businessman

Interview http://www.ventures-africa.com/2013/04/africas-newest-billionaire-ugandan-tycoon-builds-1-1b-fortune-from-the-ground-up/ with Ventures Africa (2013)

André Breton photo
Lucio Russo photo
Carl von Clausewitz photo
Bal Gangadhar Tilak photo

“The compilation of hymns into Sanhitas also appears to be a work of the early part of this period.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

“The Arctic Home in the Vedas” on dating of the Vedas to 3000 to 1400 BC [Ganga Prasad, The Fountainhead of Religion: A Comparative Study of the Principle Religions of the World and a Manifestation of Their Common Origin from the Vedas, http://books.google.com/books?id=0QO_zed25R4C&pg=PA222, 1 January 2000, Book Tree, 978-1-58509-054-9, 222–]

Dorothy L. Sayers photo

“Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Essays, The Other Six Deadly Sins (1941)

Ward Cunningham photo

“Over and over, people try to design systems that make tomorrow's work easy. But when tomorrow comes it turns out they didn't quite understand tomorrow's work, and they actually made it harder.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

Barbara Hepworth photo
Gilad Bracha photo
Mukesh Ambani photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Dorothy Day photo
Jonathan Ive photo

“The memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

A reference to the Apple design team, in an interview at the Design Museum (2003)

Kim Jong-il photo

“Karl Marx made a great contribution to the liberation cause of mankind, and because of his immortal exploits his name is still enshrined in the hearts of the working class and peoples of all countries.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

Rodong Sinmun (25 December 1995) "Respecting the forerunners of the revolution is a noble moral obligation of revolutionaries" http://www.korea-dpr.com/library/206.pdf

Daniel Tosh photo
Samuel Gompers photo

“The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

Quoted in Rothschild, Michael. Bionomics: Economy as Business Ecosystem. Washington, D.C.: BeardBooks, 1990, p. 115.