Quotes about work
page 99

Will Cuppy photo
Frederick Soddy photo
Zhang Zhijun photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Warren Farrell photo
Ali al-Hadi photo

“Compensate for the regret and negligence in previous works by working hard in the future.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Misnad al-Imām al-Hādī, p. 304.
General

Horace photo

“Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.”
Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter adsuitur pannus.

Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis
purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter
adsuitur pannus.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 14

Titian photo

“.. I also send the picture of the 'Trinity' [also called La Gloria].... in my wish to satisfy your C. M. [Caesarean Majesty] I have not spared myself the pains of striking out two or three times the work of many days to bring it to perfection and satisfy myself, whereby more time was wasted than I usually take to do such things.... the portrait of Signor Vargas [agent of Charles V, who was paying Titian for his works] introduced into the work [very probably in the 'La Gloria' / 'Trinity'] was done at his request. If it should not please your C. M. any painter can, with a couple of [brush] strokes, convert it into another person.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter from Venice to the Spanish emperor Charles V in Bruxelles, 10 Sept. 1554; original in the 'Appendix' of Titian: his life and times - With some account of his family... Vol. 2., J. A. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle, Publisher London, John Murray, 1877, p. 231-232
Titian is announcing in his letter the completion and the delivery of the paintings 'Trinity' and 'Addolorata' and probably a third painting 'Christ appearing to the Magdalen', for Mary of Hungary
1541-1576

“Manuel Mercado Acosta is an indio from the mountains of Durango. His father operated a mescal distillery before the revolutionaries drove him out. He met my mother while riding a motorcycle in El Paso. Juana Fierro Acosta is my mother. She could have been a singer in a Juarez cantina but instead decided to be Manuel’s wife because he had a slick mustache, a fast bike and promised to take her out of the slums across from the Rio Grande. She had only one demand in return for the two sons and three daughters she would bear him: “No handouts. No relief. I never want to be on welfare.” I doubt he really promised her anything in a very loud, clear voice. My father was a horsetrader even though he got rid of both the mustache and the bike when FDR drafted him, a wetback, into the U. S. Navy on June 22, 1943. He tried to get into the Marines, but when they found out he was a good swimmer and a non-citizen they put him in a sailor suit and made him drive a barge in Okinawa. We lived in a two-room shack without a floor. We had to pump our water and use kerosene if we wanted to read at night. But we never went hungry. My old man always bought the pinto beans and the white flour for the tortillas in 100-pound sacks which my mother used to make dresses, sheets and curtains. We had two acres of land which we planted every year with corn, tomatoes and yellow chiles for the hot sauce. Even before my father woke us, my old ma was busy at work making the tortillas at 5:00 A. M. while he chopped the logs we’d hauled up from the river on the weekends.”

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 72.

William Ernest Henley photo
Hélène Binet photo

“My interest in working sites is linked to an investigation of what is behind the extravagant forms and perfect lines of Hadid’s Architecture; it is an interest in the relation between the elegance of her gesture and her radical way of making a building. Something very primordial and out of time is present in those situations. I think of this as a process of forming.”

Hélène Binet (1959) Swiss photographer

In: Hélène Binet’s ‘Forming | Portrait – Architecture of Zaha Hadid’ @ Gabrielle Ammann // Gallery http://sandsof.com/2012/11/24/helene-binets-forming-portrait-architecture-of-zaha-hadid-gabrielle-ammann-gallery/, sandsof.com, 24 November 2012
Binet has photographed the finished building as well as the project during construction of Zaha Hadid's buildings since mid-1980s.

John Horgan (journalist) photo
Jon Stewart photo
Aron Ra photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
André Maurois photo
Nastassja Kinski photo
Joseph Gurney Cannon photo
Barbara Hepworth photo
Vanna Bonta photo
Patrick Buchanan photo

“[A]fter I got evicted from the Republican Party, I began reading considerably more of the works of American anarchists, thanks largely to Murray Rothbard…and I was just amazed.When I read Emma Goldman, it was as though everything I had hoped that the Republican Party would stand for suddenly came out crystallised. It was a magnificently clear statement. And another interesting things about reading Emma Goldman is that you immediately see that, consciously or not, she's the source of the best in Ayn Rand. She has the essential points that the Ayn Rand philosophy thinks, but without any of this sort of crazy solipsism that Rand is so fond of, the notion that people accomplish everything all in isolation. Emma Goldman understands that there’s a social element to even science, but she also writes that all history is a struggle of the individual against the institutions, which of course is what I’d always thought Republicans were saying, and so it goes.In other words, in the Old Right, there were a lot of statements that seemed correct, and they appeal to you emotionally, as well; it was why I was a Republican—isolationist, anti-authoritarian positions, but they’re not illuminated by anything more than statement. They just are good statements. But in the writings of the anarchists the same statements are made, but with this long illumination out of experience, analysis, comparison…it's rock-solid, and so I immediately realised that I'd been stumbling around inventing parts of a tradition that was old and thoughtful and already existed, and that's very nice to discover that—I don't think it's necessary to invent everything.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

Anarchism in America http://alexpeak.com/art/films/aia/ (15 January 1983)

Jacques Plante photo
Peter Singer photo

“The goal of maximizing the welfare of all may be better achieved by an ethic that accepts our inclinations and harnesses them so that, taken as a whole, the system works to everyone's advantage.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 157

Richard Feynman photo
Colin Wilson photo
AnnaSophia Robb photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“Unfamiliar environments heighten adrenalin, which might work for stimulating excitement or against totally relaxing into any kind of intimacy.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Alexej von Jawlensky photo
John Gray photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Paul Klee photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Gunnar Myrdal photo

“I am, I discover in late middle age, a work in progress.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

quoted in Samuel Moyn, "Intellectuals, Reason, and History: In Memory of Tony Judt", H-France Salon (2012)

Andrew Ure photo
Griff Furst photo
Michelle Obama photo

“People who work the day shift, kiss their kids goodnight, and head out for the night shift — without disappointment, without regret — that goodnight kiss a reminder of everything they're working for.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, Democratic National Convention speech (2008)

Mark Tobey photo
Isa Genzken photo
Reggie Fils-Aimé photo
Desmond Morris photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Adam Roberts photo
Auguste Rodin photo

“You would not believe my suffering… Death would be sweeter… I can't go another day without seeing you. Atrocious madness, it's the end. I won't be able to work any more. Malevolent goddess! And yet I love you furiously.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Auguste Rodin in letter to Camille Claudel, as cited in: Nigel Cawthorne (1998) Sex Lives of the Great Artists. p. 68
1950s-1990s

Vladimir Lenin photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Glory of the Garden http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/english_history/glorygarden.html, Stanza 8.
Other works

Tom Baker photo
Peter Steele photo

“If I worked in a bank as a teller, there wouldn't be girls lined up outside of where I work when I'm done.”

Peter Steele (1962–2010) American musician

Source: Peter Steele biography "Soul on fire" by Jeff Wagner, p. 209

Robert Southwell photo
Neal Stephenson photo

“Being a part of a political party is something like being a partner in a marriage - work at it and stay loyal to it, and when you can't stomach it any longer, leave it.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 3, The truth squad, p. 37

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Kent Hovind photo
Shreya Ghoshal photo
Kit Carson photo
Hans Arp photo
Augustus De Morgan photo

“If much difficulty should be experienced in the elementary chapters, I know of no work which I can so confidently recommend to be used with the present one, as that of M. Duhamel.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Duhamel, Cours d'Analyse de l'Ecole Polytechnique. Paris, Bachelier. vol i 1841 vol. ii. 1840.
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Akio Morita photo

“We want everybody to have the best facilities in which to work, but we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 182.

Daniel Handler photo

“At this point in the dreadful story I am writing, I must interrupt for a moment and describe something that happened to a good friend of mine named Mr. Sirin. Mr. Sirin was a lepidoptrerist, a word which usually means "a person who studies butterflies." In this case, however, the word "lepidopterist" means "a man who was being pursued by angry government officials," and on the night I am telling you about they were right on his heels. Mr. Sirin looked back to see how close they were--four officers in their bright-pink uniforms, with small flashlights in their left hands and large nets in their right--and realized that in a moment they would catch up, and arrest him and his six favorite butterflies, which were frantically flapping alongside him. Mr. Sirin did not care much if he was captured--he had been in prison four and a half times over the course of his long and complicated life--but he cared very much about the butterflies. He realized that these six delicate insects would undoubtedly perish in bug prison, where poisonous spiders, stinging bees, and other criminals would rip them to shreds. So, as the secret police closed in, Mr. Sirin opened his mouth as wide as he could and swallowed all six butterflies whole, quickly placing them in the dark but safe confines of his empty stomach. It was not a pleasant feeling to have these six insects living inside him, but Mr. Sirin kept them there for three years, eating only the lightest foods served in prison so as not to crush the insects with a clump of broccoli or a baked potato. When his prison sentence was over, Mr. Sirin burped up the grateful butterflies and resumed his lepidoptery work in a community that was much more friendly to scientists and their specimens.”

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

George W. Bush photo

“You know, I could run for governor and all this but I'm basically a media creation. I've never really done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil industry. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

In an interview with the Midland Reporter Telegram on 4 July 1989, quoted in Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential (John Wiley and Sons, 2003) by James Moore and Wayne Slater, p. 161.
1980s

Jonathan Pearce photo

“Fabregas looking left….. this is Abou Diaby…tall, rangy…and going for goal…. OOOHHHH - What an absolute screamer! Abou Diaby! Arsenal 1, Derby County 0. A glorious strike! Found in space, cut inside worked the yard more in space and thumped it!”

Jonathan Pearce (1959) British football commentator

Abou Diaby's first goal of the season, which was best described as an "absolute screamer" by Pearce. The goal, which was followed by an Adebayor hat-trick and a Fabregas shot, helped cement Arsenal's position at the top of the Premier League summit in early September 2007.

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo
George W. Bush photo

“The nation, the nation sends its love and compassion for everybody who is here. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud, and may God bless America.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, I Can Hear You, the Rest of the World Hears You (September 2001)

“I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world.
I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with Einar Thorsrud, who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the Tavistock Institute in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances.
Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo… The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters (2001) "Tom Peters's True Confessions" in Fast Company, December 2001 ( online http://www.fastcompany.com/44077/tom-peterss-true-confessions, Nov 31, 2001).

Robert J. Marks II photo

“Simulated evolution on a computer works but is no where near the gradual incremental process that is associated with Darwinian evolution. It's closer to dog breeding in terms of its computational complexity.”

Robert J. Marks II (1950) American electrical engineering researcher and intelligent design advocate

In the universe, [besides] space, matter and energy, there is information. [Information hasn't yet] been [well] defined nor studied.
Many times proponents of evolutionary computing … refuse to recognize the contribution of [the programmer's infusion of information] into the process.
Association with ID (intelligent design) in any way is detrimental to one's career. Everybody who works in ID should first have tenure before they come out of the closet.
My comments are as an expert in computational intelligence. I'm not a biologist. For me to talk about the details of biology is as stupid as a British biologist claiming expertise in religion. (A reference to Richard Dawkins.)
Engineers actually design things. This is why [many] engineers are interested in the area of intelligent design
"Well-Informed: Dr. Robert Marks and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab,", From an interview with Casey Luskin of the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute, July 20, 2007, 2010-05-06 http://www.idthefuture.com/2007/07/wellinformed_dr_robert_marks_a.html,

Anu Partanen photo
Šantidéva photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
David Eugene Smith photo
Paul Klee photo

“The work grows "stone upon stone" (additive) or
The block is hewn "chip from chip" (subtractive)
Both processes, building and reducing, are time bound.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

I.13 Productive | Receptive, p. 33
1921 - 1930, Pedagogical Sketch Book, (1925)

Michelle Obama photo
David Hare photo

“Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, and yet both actively working together.”

David Hare (1947) British writer

Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 7.
Misattributed

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“Certainly after all you are right, damn well right - even making allowance for hope, the thing is to accept the probably disastrous reality. I am hoping to throw myself once again wholly in my work which has got behind hand.”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 29 March 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 582), p 25
1880s, 1889

Andy Goldsworthy photo
John Banville photo
Ben Gibbard photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Donald J. Trump photo
George Long photo