Quotes about worker
A collection of quotes on the topic of worker, work, working, people.
Quotes about worker

“Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay”

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm “Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?”
Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher (1932). “Those Damned Nazis,” (Nazi propaganda pamphlet).
1930s

“Jesus was a great worker, and His disciples must not be afraid of hard work.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 128.

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932).Translated as “Those Damned Nazis: Why a Workers Party?
“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We a Workers’ Party?” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932)
1930s

Source: On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State

“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932)
/ 1930s

“Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny.”
Final address (1973)
Context: The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.
Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, great avenues will again be opened, through which will pass the free man, to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

"Shrine or Factory?" (1918); translation from Mikhail Anikst et al. (eds.) Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987) p. 15

2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Giving Labor The Business, p. 122
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“Harry Dresden: You rush a miracle worker, you get lousy miracles!”
Source: The Dresden Files, Small Favor (2008), Chapter 24

1848 (quoted in Infections and Inequalities by Paul Farmer, page 1.

In:P.83
Presidents of India, 1950-2003

(1847)

from "The Social-Democratic View of the National Question", 1904 (aged 26) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1904/09/01.htm
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“ A New Storm Against Imperialism https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_80.htm” (1968)

Interview: Tom Kenny talks voicing SpongeBob Squarepants and 'Mr. Show' http://www.metro.us/entertainment/interview-tom-kenny-talks-voicing-spongebob-squarepants-and-mr-show/zsJoba---UspN3mmMXb2BE (February 2, 2015)

Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)

"As I Please," Tribune (26 January 1945)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/</sup>
"As I Please" (1943–1947)

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 128.
Other

"The Red Association" http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/writings/ch05.htm (1870)

"The Politics of Mass Strikes and Unions"; Collected Works 2 <!-- p. 465 -->
Context: The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight... That's exactly what is laudable about it, that's exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers' movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation.

§ 6
"Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
Context: The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin — at any rate not in Spain. After the summer of 1937 those with eyes in their heads realized that the Government could not win the war unless there were some profound change in the international set-up, and in deciding to fight on Negrin and the others may have been partly influenced by the expectation that the world war which actually broke out in 1939 was coming in 1938. The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that.
The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans and Italians, whose motives were obvious enough. The motives of France and Britain are less easy to understand. In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds’ worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.

. . . It is Germany that is moving towards Russia, rather than the other way about. It is therefore nonsense to talk about Germany ‘going Bolshevik’ if Hitler falls. Germany is going Bolshevik because of Hitler and not in spite of him.
Review of The Totalitarian Enemy by F. Borkenau, Time and Tide (4 May 1940). Orwell: My Country Right or Left - 1940 to 1943, Vol. 2, Essays, Journalism & Letters, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, edit., Boston, MA, Nonpareil Books (2000), p. 25.

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

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

Letter from Lenin to Gorky https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/g2aleks.html, Sept. 15, 1919
1910s
Source: The Letters Of Lenin


Atal Bihari Vajpayee, The Organiser, 31 October 2004 issue. p. 13, Article Named- 'His writings will guide us' https://web.archive.org/web/20120331123458/http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesa3a9.html?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=48&page=13

the seizure of Bologna
Source: Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944), Ch. 2

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 12-13.

“The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!”
Cultural Transformation Study Guide http://forecast.umkc.edu/ftppub/ba541/DEMINGLIBRARY/DLVol24-25.PDF Accessed December 19, 2006
Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Variant: Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845)

"That's What America Is," speech given on Gay Freedom Day (1978-06-25) in San Francisco

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Radio Address to the Nation on Solidarity and United States Relations With Poland http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43110#axzz1Go825Y2t (1982-10-09). Compare with an earlier Reagan speech: "... where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." Labor Day Speech at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, New Jersey, September 1, 1980 http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/9.1.80.html
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)
Cited in: Urwick & Brech (1961: 177)
Management and the worker, 1939

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

In response to the question, "So, Mr. Lamborghini, in short what type of man are you?" asked by a television reporter, broadcast on RAI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YLcUtwN38U&feature=player_embedded

Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, pp. 628–629.
Grundrisse (1857/58)
Context: The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital…
The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i. e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour...
The mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.

§ 134
2010s, 2015, Laudato si' : Care for Our Common Home

Speech on Project Economic Justice http://www.cesj.org/about-cesj-in-brief/history-accomplishments/pres-reagans-speech-on-project-economic-justice/ (The White House, 3 August 1987)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)

As quoted in Warrior : The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon (1989)

"What We Need", editorial published (24 October 1917), as quoted in Stalin : A Biography (2004) by Robert Service; also in Sochineniya, Vol. 3, p. 389
Variant translation:
The present imposter government, which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people, must be replaced by a government recognized by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants, and held accountable to their representatives
As quoted in The Bolsheviks Come to Power : The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (2004) by Alexander Rabinowitch, p. 252
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

Eugenics, academic and practical. Eugenics Review, 27, 95-100, 1935.
The original has ‘to store it as’ inserted before the final words ‘a warehouse’, likely a mistake left from an earlier draft.
1930s

cf. Mt 25:5ff.
Section 197
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Source: Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944), Ch. 4

Source: Interregional and international trade. (1933), p. 307; As cited in: Irwin, Douglas A. "Ohlin Versus Stolper-Samuelson." No. w7641. National bureau of economic research, 2000. p. 4.

Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005)
2005

“The worker's effectiveness is determined largely by the way he is being managed.”
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 2, p. 380

Chung-shan Ch'üan-shu (Zhongshan Quanshu), vol. II (1936)

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

Lecture at Harvard University. Quoted in Joseph Sambrook, David W. Russell, Molecular Cloning (2001), Vol. 1, 153.
biographyonline.net http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/alex-fleming.html

Cited in Soviet Youth and Socialism http://leninist.biz/en/1974/SYAS228/3.1-Youth.and.Culture

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Quote from: 'Ideological Superstructure'
1926 - 1941, Rußland: Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowjetunion' (1929)

As quoted in Angelo Devananda, Daily Prayers with Mother Teresa (Fount, 1987), p. 91
1980s

Quoted in Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death, Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel, New York, NY, Skyhorse Publishing, 2010 p. 25, conversation with Hertha Holk
1920s

Into the Fight Against Famine
6. The Kulaks - bulwark and hope of the counter-revolution
How the Revolution Armed (1923)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 145.

2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 245

2014, Address to the Nation on Immigration (November 2014)

“All office workers are afraid of being late for work.”
The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Manuscript from 1940, as translated in Writings of Leon Trotsky edited by George Breitman

Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944)

Letter to Anka Stalherm (14 April 1920), quoted in Ralph Georg Reuth, Goebbels (Harvest, 1994), pp. 33-34
1920s

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Thomas J. Sargent, "The Ends of Four Big Inflations" (1981).
"Warning to the People" (1851)

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

2008, Yes, we can speech (January 2008)

" The Majority Disguised as the Resented Minority http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/16118" (31 May 1994)

Howard Gardner, "The Ethical Mind," in: Harvard Business Review, March 2007.