Quotes about work
page 83

John Quinlan photo

“As you get old you have to train smarter. Every young guy goes through it; every young guy says I'm invincible, it will never happen to me. The body is like a car or machine, you work it so often that eventually it's going to break down.”

John Quinlan (1974) American professional wrestler and bodybuilder

John Quinlan Muscle & Strength Audio Podcast Interview by Steve Shaw, Bodybuilder And Wrestler John Quinlan Talks About His Passion For Lifting (2010)

William Howard Taft photo

“I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Letter of Archibald Butt to Clara F. Butt (1 June 1909); reprinted in The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt (Doubleday, Doran, & Co., 1930).

David Ben-Gurion photo

“The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

As quoted in Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs : From Peace to War (1985) by Shabtai Teveth, p. 66

Hyman George Rickover photo
Omarosa photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“There is a natural right that says that when the state asks you for a third of what you earned through back-breaking work, this seems to you a reasonable demand and you give in. If the state asks you for more, or much more, then it is a clear abuse against you and then you try to find evasive ways to make you feel coherent to your intimate sense of morality and it doesn't make you feel ethically guilty.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

Addressing the commander of the special italian police corp, Guardia di Finanza, whose job is to fight financial fraud and tax evasion in November of 2003, quoted in la Repubblica (17 febbraio 2004) http://www.repubblica.it/2004/b/sezioni/politica/cdlverifica2/candida/candida.html
2003

Jerry Springer photo
Saadi photo

“When gnats act in concert they will bring
down an elephant: when ants set to work,
and move in a body, they can strip a fierce
lion of its hide”

Chapter 3, story 28 http://books.google.com/books?id=LDpbAAAAQAAJ&q=%22use+a+sweet+tongue+courtesy+and+gentleness+and+thou+mayst+manage+to+guide+an+elephant+with+a+hair%22&pg=PA292#v=onepage
Gulistan (1258)

Donald Rumsfeld photo

“Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence…you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

DoD News Briefing May 01, 2002 http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3424
2000s

Giorgio Vasari photo
Hans Haacke photo
Tom Petty photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Howard Bloom photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Anne Murray photo
John Banville photo
Matt Dillon photo
Richard Rumelt photo
Paul Cézanne photo

“I still work with difficulty, but I seem to get along. That is the important thing to me. Sensations form the foundation of my work, and they are imperishable, I think. Moreover, I am getting rid of that devil who, as you know, used to stand behind me and forced me at will to 'imitate'; he's not even dangerous any more.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

one week later Cezanne died
Quote in Cezanne's last letter to his son Paul, Aix, 15 October 1906; as quoted in Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 112
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Gene Wolfe photo
George Carlin photo
Georges Braque photo
Richard Fuller (minister) photo

“To-day, let us rise and go to our work. To-morrow, we shall rise and go to our reward.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

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

John Stuart Mill photo
Gerald Ford photo

“Tell the truth, work hard, and come to dinner on time.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

As quoted in Time and Chance (1994) by James Cannon, p. 411.

Ian Hacking photo
Otto Mueller photo

“I depict my life and experiences in my works of art.”

Otto Mueller (1874–1930) German painter and printmaker of the expressionist movement

quoted by his sister Emmy Muellers in her 'Recollections'; as cited in Otto Mueller: A Stand-Alone Modernist, Dieter W. Posselt; 2006 / new edition 2010, Books on Demand, GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany - ISBN:978-3-8448-6866-1

Donald N. Levine photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don’t like. No other criterion exists for me.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to I.L. Leontev (March 22, 1890)
Letters

Bill Haywood photo

“Eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of sleep - eight hours a day! (From the Haymarket era eight hour campaign)”

Bill Haywood (1869–1928) Labor organizer

(Haywood variation) Eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of sleep - and eight dollars a day!
Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 147.

“It will say that in peace we have time that a man has vision, has been fed, has worked..
.. That hands and minds and tools and material made a symbol to the elevation of vision”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1940s, The Question – What is your Hope' (c. 1940s)

Jay Samit photo

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

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.151

Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
Jerry Saltz photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
A. R. Rahman photo
Bob Black photo
John Howe (illustrator) photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“This year we must continue to improve the quality of American life. Let us fulfill and improve the great health and education programs of last year, extending special opportunities to those who risk their lives in our armed forces. I urge the House of Representatives to complete action on three programs already passed by the Senate—the Teacher Corps, rent assistance, and home rule for the District of Columbia. In some of our urban areas we must help rebuild entire sections and neighborhoods containing, in some cases, as many as 100,000 people. Working together, private enterprise and government must press forward with the task of providing homes and shops, parks and hospitals, and all the other necessary parts of a flourishing community where our people can come to live the good life. I will offer other proposals to stimulate and to reward planning for the growth of entire metropolitan areas. Of all the reckless devastations of our national heritage, none is really more shameful than the continued poisoning of our rivers and our air. We must undertake a cooperative effort to end pollution in several river basins, making additional funds available to help draw the plans and construct the plants that are necessary to make the waters of our entire river systems clean, and make them a source of pleasure and beauty for all of our people. To attack and to overcome growing crime and lawlessness, I think we must have a stepped-up program to help modernize and strengthen our local police forces. Our people have a right to feel secure in their homes and on their streets—and that right just must be secured. Nor can we fail to arrest the destruction of life and property on our highways.”

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)

Hal Varian photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Help for the Starving, Pt. III (January 1892)

Gustave Flaubert photo
Mao Zedong photo
Prince photo

“[the authors in Justice Belied made a] compelling case that this system is not only flawed but produces serious and systematic injustice. One major theme pressed in a number of chapters is that the international criminal justice system (ICJS) that has emerged in the age of tribunals and “humanitarian intervention” has replaced a real, if imperfect, system of international justice with one that misuses forms of justice to allow dominant powers to attack lesser countries without legal impediment. No tribunals have been established for Israel’s actions in Palestine or Kagame’s mass killings in the DRC. Numerous authors in Justice Belied stress the remarkable fact of the ICC’s [International Criminal Court] exclusive focus on Africans, with not a single case of charges brought against non-Africans. And within Africa itself the selectivity is notorious – U. S. clients Kagame and Museveni are exempt; U. S. targets Kenyatta, Taylor, and Gadaffi are charged. […] The system has worked poorly in service to justice, as the authors point out, but U. S. policy has had larger geopolitical and economic aims, and underwriting Kagame’s terror in Rwanda and the DRC and directing the ICC toward selected African targets while ignoring others served those aims. Many of the statutes and much political rhetoric accompanying the new ICJS proclaimed the aim of bringing peace and reconciliation. But this was blatant hypocrisy as the exclusion of aggression as a crime, the selectivity of application, the frequency of applied victor’s justice, and the manifold abuses of the judicial processes have made for war, hatred, and exacerbated conflict. The authors of Justice Belied do a remarkable job of spelling out these sorry conditions and calling for a dismantling of the new ICJS and return to the UN Charter and nation-based attention to dealing with injustice.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Herman, review of Justice Belied: The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice, Z Magazine, January 2015.
2010s

Robert Cheeke photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“I believe every American willing to work hard should be able to find a job that provides dignity, pride and decent pay that can support a family.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

Horatio Nelson photo

“It is warm work; and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment. But mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

At the Battle of Copenhagen (2 April 1801) [citation needed]
1800s

Gore Vidal photo

“The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Love Love Love," Partisan Review (Spring 1959)
1970s, Homage to Daniel Shays : Collected Essays (1972)

Jack LaLanne photo

“God gives us the power to act for ourselves, but let me tell you something. At five in the morning I have never heard this [he says mimicking a knock on the door]. Hello Jack, this is Jesus. I will work out today.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness and Longevity", pp.10-11

Russell Brand photo
Patti Smith photo

“People have the power
To redeem the work of fools
Upon the meek the graces shower
It's decreed the people rule.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

People Have the Power, from Dream of Life (1988)
Lyrics

Colin Wilson photo

“Once launched into some activity, conceiving of himself as an instrument of God’s will, the ascetic did not stop to ask about the meaning of it all. On the contrary, the more furious his activity, the more the problem of what his activity meant receded from his mind. … To meet the demands of the day was as near as one could come to doing the pious thing, in this—God’s—world. To trouble about meaning was really an impiety and, of course, frivolous, because futile. For the question of meaning, therefore, neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic type feels responsible, if his spiritual discipline has been successful. The recently fashionable religious talk of “ultimate concern” makes no sense either in the ascetic or in the therapeutic mode. To try to relate “ultimate concern” to everyday behavior would be exhausting and nerve-shattering work; indeed, it could effectively inhibit less grandiose kinds of work. Neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic bothers his head about “ultimate concern.” Such a concern is for mystics who cannot otherwise enjoy their leisure. In the workaday world, there are no ultimate concerns, only present ones. Therapy is the respite of every day, during which the importance of the present is learned, and the existence of what in the ascetic tradition came to be called the “ultimate” or “divine” is unlearned.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Henri Fayol photo
Sean Parker photo

“It seems like the right thing to do is tackle problems other people aren’t working on. Part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur, if you’re going for a really huge opportunity, is trying to find problems that aren’t quite on the radar yet and try to solve those.”

Sean Parker (1979) American internet technology entrepreneur

TechCrunch: <nowiki>"Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning Hint At The Future Of Airtime [TCTV https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/05/sean-parker-airtime-app-platform-cool/"</nowiki>] (5 June 2012)

Amartya Sen photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!”

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

"How to Organise Competition?" (27 December 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/dec/25.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 411, 414.
1910s

Joseph Chamberlain photo

“You are suffering from the unrestricted imports of cheaper goods. You are suffering also from the unrestricted immigration of the people who make these goods. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)…The evils of immigration have increased during recent years. And behind those people who have already reached these shores, remember there are millions of the same kind who, under easily conceivable circumstances, might follow in their track, and might invade this country in a way and to an extent of which few people have at present any conception. The same causes that brought 10,000 and 20,000, and tens of thousands, may bring hundreds of thousands, or even millions. (Hear, hear.) If that would be an evil, surely he is a statesman who would deal with it in the beginning. (Hear, hear.)…When it began we were told it was so small that it would not matter to us. Now it has been growing with great rapidity, it has already affected a whole district, it is spreading into other parts of the country…Will you take it in time (hear, hear), or will you wait, hoping for something to turn up which will preserve you from what you all see to be the natural consequences of such an invasion? …it is a fact that when these aliens come here they are answerable for a larger amount of crime and disease and hopeless poverty than are proportionate to their numbers. (Cheers.) They come here—I do not blame them, I am speaking of the results—they come here and change the whole character of a district. (Cheers.) The speech, the nationality of whole streets has been altered; and British workmen have been driven by the fierce competition of famished men from trades which they previously followed. (Cheers.)…But the party of free importers is against any reform. How could they be otherwise?…they are perfectly consistent. If sweated goods are to be allowed in this country without restriction, why not the people who make them? Where is the difference? There is no difference either in the principle or in the results. It all comes to the same thing—less labour for the British working man.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Cheers.
Speech in Limehouse in the East End of London (15 December 1904), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain In The East-End.’, The Times (16 December 1904), p. 8.
1900s

Rudy Rucker photo

“It was funny. I knew I didn't want the bomb to be a success. But yet I'd spent so many years working around physics labs that I couldn't stand not to do it right.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 68

William Jones photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Vitruvius photo
Stéphane Dion photo

“Canada is a country that works better in practice than in theory.”

Stéphane Dion (1955) Canadian politician

As quoted in "One nation or many?" https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20170522044424/http://www.economist.com/node/8173164 (16 November 2006), The Economist

Lew Rockwell photo
James Van Allen photo

“A man is a fabulous nuisance in space right now. He's not worth all the cost of putting him up there and keeping him comfortable and working.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On men in space, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

Archimedes photo
John Bright photo

“Working men in this hall…I…say to you, and through the Press to all the working men of this kingdom, that the accession to office of Lord Derby is a declaration of war against the working classes…They reckon nothing of the Constitution of their country—a Constitution which has not more regard to the Crown or to the aristocracy than it has to the people; a Constitution which regards the House of Commons fairly representing the nation as important a part of the Government system of the kingdom as the House of Lords or the Throne itself…Now, what is the Derby principle? It is the shutting out of much more than three-fourths, five-sixths, and even more than five-sixths, of the people from the exercise of constitutional rights…What is it that we are come to in this country that what is being rapidly conceded in all parts of the world is being persistently and obstinately refused here in England, the home of freedom, the mother of Parliaments…Stretch out your hand to your countrymen in every portion of the three kingdoms, and ask them to join in a great and righteous effort on behalf of that freedom which has so long been the boast of Englishmen, but which the majority of Englishmen have never yet possessed…Remember the great object for which we strive, care not for calumnies and for lies, our object is this—to restore the British Constitution and with all its freedom to the British people.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (27 August 1866), quoted in The Times (28 August 1866), p. 4.
1860s

“The biography of a minister is bound to be a work of moral and political importance.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Le Marquis de Pombal, p. 5
Le marquis de Pombal (1869)

Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo

“All the Jews needed to be expelled from the press, none of them could be allowed to work their poison in this way, one day I would see, on his restoration, what a pogrom there would then be, but of a different and more effective kind than all those in Galicia!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Remarks to his doctor, Dr Haehner (7 October 1922), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1235
1920s

Yehuda Bauer photo

“What's in my veins makes me free
Oh what you have done for me!
Two who made a work of art
Mama brought the armor, Daddy engineered the heart.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Baby One (new original song by Ysabella Brave)" (26 August 2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKJ7eaDWsAk

James A. Michener photo
Bertolt Brecht photo

“How long
Do works endure? As long
As they are not completed.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Wie lange
Dauern die Werke? So lange
Als bis sie fertig sind.
"About the way to construct enduring works" [Über die Bauart langdauernder Werke] (1932), trans. Frank Jones in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 193
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Leszek Kolakowski photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Farah Pahlavi photo
Ian Smith photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Ron White photo
James Comey photo
Richard Serra photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Mel Gibson photo

“Why are they calling her a Nazi? …Because modern secular Judaism wants to blame the holocaust on the Catholic Church. And it's a lie. And it's revisionism. And they've been working on that one for a while.”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

(On criticism of Catherine Emmerich, the 19th century Augustinian nun whose visions greatly influenced Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ.) - The New Yorker, September 15 2003

Calvin Coolidge photo

“We have acted in the name of world peace and of humanity. Always the obstacles to be encountered have been distrust, suspicion and hatred. The great effort has been to allay and remove these sentiments. I believe that America can assist the world in this direction by her example. We have never forgotten the service done us by Lafayette, but we have long ago ceased to bear an enmity toward Great Britain by reason of two wars that were fought out between us. We want Europe to compose its difficulties and liquidate its hatreds. Would it not be well if we set the example and liquidated some of our own? The war is over. The militarism of Central Europe which menaced the security of the world has been overthrown. In its place have sprung up peaceful republics. Already we have assisted in refinancing Austria. We are about to assist refinancing Germany. We believe that such action will be helpful to France, but we can give further and perhaps even more valuable assistance both to ourselves and to Europe by bringing to an end our own hatreds. The best way for us who wish all our inhabitants to be single-minded in their Americanism is for us to bestow upon each group of our inhabitants that confidence and fellowship which is due to all Americans. If we want to get the hyphen out of our country, we can best begin by taking it out of our own minds. If we want France paid, we can best work towards that end by assisting in the restoration of the German people, now shorn of militarism, to their full place in the family of peaceful mankind.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Francis Escudero photo

“On the occasion of the International Women’s Day 2016, I call on all Filipino men, women and the LGBT community to be united as one powerful force in promoting and protecting the Filipino women’s physical and emotional health and overall well-being. As one collective group, we must all work to ensure that discrimination and violence against Filipino women, and all women all over the world, do not happen in any instance. Everyday, discrimination and violence against women in so many forms—visible and invisible, physical and verbal—take place. These acts have deep and lasting effects on the women’s health and well-being. On this day, let us also renew our resolve and commitment to uphold, advance and protect our achievements in making the Philippine society more sensitive to the issues affecting the lives of Filipino women. More work needs to be done to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, factors seen by experts as associated with discrimination and violence. Let us do everything within our power and might to stop all forms of discrimination and violence against women, that their rights are protected and upheld, and that they optimally enjoy and achieve the possible maximum standard of physical and emotion health.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2016, March 8). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153923936700610/
2016, Facebook

E.E. Cummings photo
Richard Feynman photo

“The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 2: "The Princeton Years", "A Map of the Cat?", p. 70
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)