Quotes about working
page 33

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo

“The whole of the Saviour's ministerial life, at least the part of it that stands on record, was passed in what we may call substantially a revival work.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 521

“Niven made a name for himself as a hard SF author, which is to say, someone whose SF provides enough technical detail that the reader can be certain that various mechanisms and events couldn't work the way the author has them working.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

review of All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/remember-when-niven-was-fun, 2015
2010s

Robert Pinsky photo

“That physical tingle, that powerful audible experience(not with poets projecting their work to an audience) but more intimate, less planned than that.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz

H.L. Mencken photo

“The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Prejudices, Fourth Series, ch. 11 (1924)
1920s

Joseph Louis Lagrange photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Настоящее произведение искусства делает то, что в сознании воспринимающего уничтожается разделение между ним и художником...
What is Art? (1897)

Fay Wray photo
Paul Klee photo

“The eye travels along the paths cut out for it in the work.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

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

Thomas Carlyle photo

“He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.”

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

Introduction to Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845).
1840s

Garth Brooks photo
John Moffat photo
Rick Santorum photo
George Horne photo

“Human learning, with the blessing of God upon it, introduces us to divine wisdom; and while we study the works of nature the God of nature will manifest himself to us; since, to a well-tutored mind, “The heavens,” without a miracle, “declare his glory, and the firmament showeth his handy-work.””

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

George Horne (bp. of Norwich.) (1799). Discourses on several subjects and occasions. Vol. 1,2, p. 357; As quoted in Allibone (1880)

“If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudoscience' and 'unscientific' from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us.”

Larry Laudan (1941) American philosopher

"The Demise of the Demarcation Problem", in Cohen, R.S.; Laudan, L., Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum (1983)

Leo Tolstoy photo
William Blake photo

“The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 22

Yasunari Kawabata photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Margaret Fuller photo

“Those seeking to work out the relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis have not been immune to the intellectual division of labor that severs the life nerve of dialectical thought.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 74

Dennis Skinner photo
Kurt Schwitters photo

“I have two principle aims, two life works. The second is my sonata [Schwitters' 'UrSonata' - a long sound poem of 35 minutes]”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 48 : quoted by Margareth Miller to Oliver Kaufmann [the first principle aim is his Merzbau]

Victor Villaseñor photo
Esther Williams photo
Thomas Hardiman photo
Margaret Cho photo
Slavoj Žižek photo

“I found there, on the central square (Václavské náměstí), a café that miraculously worked through this emergency. I remember they had wonderful strawberry cakes, and I was sitting there eating strawberry cakes and watching Russian tanks against demonstrators. It was perfect.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Anecdote about the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, quoted in The New Yorker (5 May 2003), p. 39 http://books.google.com/books?id=AZQeAQAAMAAJ&q=%22cakes+and+watching+Russian+tanks+against+demonstrators.+It+was+perfect%22&dq=%22cakes+and+watching+Russian+tanks+against+demonstrators.+It+was+perfect%22&hl=en&ei=3HRhTpzzPIrv0gGwiazpDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA

Chris Cornell photo

“I really had to come to the conclusion, the sort of humbling conclusion that, guess what, I'm no different than anybody else, I've got to sort of ask for help not something I ever did, ever. And then part two of that is, like, accept it when it comes and, you know, believe what people tell me. And trusting in what I have been told, and then seeing that work.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

On what led him to check himself into rehab in 2002, quoted in ** What Would CHRIS CORNELL Tell Himself At 18? 'Don't Drink', Blabbermouth, 4 November 2011 http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/what-would-chris-cornell-tell-himself-at-18-don-t-drink/,
Soundgarden Era

John McCain photo

“Diane Sawyer: Do you agree the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent?
McCain: Well, I think it‘s very serious. I think it‘s a serious situation.
Sawyer: Not precarious and urgent?
McCain: Oh, I don‘t know exactly—run through the vocabulary. But it‘s a very serious situation. But there‘s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I‘m afraid that it‘s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Good Morning America interview, after recent news that escalating insurgency and violent incidents had left around 2,500 people dead (over 700 of them civilians) since January of the same year in Afghanistan; 21 July 2008; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25799429/
2000s, 2008

Paul Wolfowitz photo
Gideon Mantell photo
Hans von Seeckt photo

“The Weimar Constitution is for me not a noli me tangere; I did not participate in its creation, and it is in its basic principles contrary to my political thinking…I believed that a change of the constitution was approaching, and that I could help towards this by methods which were not unnecessarily to lead through civil war. So far as concerns my attitude towards the international Social Democracy, I have to confess that at the outset I believed in the possibility to winning over part of it to national co-operation; but I have revised this opinion long ago, a long time before our conversation, in so far as the Social Democratic Party is concerned, not the German working class as such…I see clearly that a collaboration with the Social Democratic Party is impossible because it repudiates the idea of military preparedness…I do not consider a Stresemann cabinet viable, not even after its transformation. This lack of confidence I have expressed to the chancellor himself as well as to the president, and I have told them that in the long run I could not guarantee the attitude of the Reichswehr to a government in which it had no confidence…A Stresemann government cannot last without the support of the Reichswehr and of the forces standing behind it.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to von Kahr (2 November 1923), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 117.

“To achieve the structure it takes a damn long time, so my paintings are always in work for a very long time—sometimes a year. Not that I work on them every day. I will have them, and then come back to them after a year, and also return intermittently. It’s not easily done. I am not able to do “one, two, a painting.” I try to do it very quickly, but it doesn’t work with me. I simply can’t do it. Very often people look and say, 'Ah, fantastic! That’s a beautiful painting.'”

Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist

But the moment they are out the door I start working on it. I rework it.
In a talk with Kosinski, before 'Per Kirkeby at the Phillips', in The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. January, 2013
Kirkeby spoke to exhibition co-curator Dorothy Kosinski about the necessity of time in the development of a painting.
1995 and later

Dana Gioia photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Norman Mailer photo

“Booze, pot, too much sex, failure in one's private life, too much attrition, too much recognition, too little recognition. Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

As quoted in The Sunday Herald http://web.archive.org/web/20071112125539/http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1824217.0.norman_mailer_1923_2007.php [Scotland] (11 November 2007)

L. P. Jacks photo
Jacques Lipchitz photo

“Enemies are at work day and night in the material realm. Chief among these are ignorance, carelessness, and greed. Operating independently or together, they have wrought enormous destruction.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 75

James Macpherson photo

“One is tempted to call them works of genius; they are quite Homeric in their internal unity, purity of phrasing, clear, ringing music of language and dramatic coloring.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Lin Carter, Dragons, Elves, and Heroes (New York: Ballantine, 1971) p. 76.
Criticism

Gyles Brandreth photo

“I get to my desk at eight in the morning and I leave it at seven in the evening and I just work away. I'm a work machine.”

Gyles Brandreth (1948) British writer, broadcaster and former Member of Parliament

WhatsonStage interview, 2010

“The first commercial licensing of where CP/M was used to monitor programs in the Octopus network. Little attention was paid to CP/M for about a year. In my spare time, I worked to improve overall facilities… By this time, CP/M had been adapted for four different controllers….
In 1976”

Gary Kildall (1942–1994) Computer scientist and entrepreneur

Gary Kildall (1980) " The History of CP/M, The Evolution of an Industry: One Person's Viewpoint http://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/CPM_history_kildall.txt." Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia Vol. 5 (1) (41). p. 6-7

Lanxi Daolong photo

“Thirty years and more
I worked to nullify myself.
Now I leap the leap of death.
The ground churns up
The skies spin round.”

Lanxi Daolong (1213–1278) Buddhist monk

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6; Cited in: Eugene Thacker. " Black Illumination: Zen and the poetry of death https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/07/02/books/black-illumination-zen-poetry-death/#.Wy4PIqczZEY," Special to the JAPAN TIMES, July 2, 2016.

Edgar Guest photo
Elaine Paige photo

“Learn to take rejection, keep fit and work only with the best in your field.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

As quoted in "Portrait of the artist: Elaine Paige, actor" by Laura Barnett in The Guardian (22 May 2007)

Patrick Stump photo
Vyasa photo

“18 chapters of Vyasa's Jaya constitutes the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred text of the Hindus. Thus, this work of Vyasa, called Jaya deals with diverse subjects like geography, history, warfare, religion and morality.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

B. K. Pandey, in Encyclopaedia of Indian philosophers, Volume 2 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=d8ROAQAAIAAJ, p. 14.
Sources

Edith Evans photo

“A successful artist of any kind has to work so hard that she is justified in refusing to lay down her sceptre until she is placed on the bier.”

Edith Evans (1888–1976) British actress

As quoted in Dame Edith Evans, ch. 13, by Bryan Forbes (1977)

Mohammad bin Salman photo

“We know that we are a main goal for the Iranian regime. We will not wait until the battle becomes in Saudi Arabia but we will work to have the battle in Iran rather than in Saudi Arabia”

Mohammad bin Salman (1985) Saudi crown prince and minister of defense

2017-05-07 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-saudi-minister/iran-minister-warns-saudi-arabia-after-battle-comments-tasnim-idUSKBN1830Y7

Richard Cobden photo

“when a famous investor publishes a newsletter, it's a sure tip-off that his techniques have stopped working.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 3, The Market Is Smarter Than You Are, p. 88.

Anish Kapoor photo
Albert Jay Nock photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“They have retired into the Judiciary as a stronghold. There the remains of federalism are to be preserved and fed from the Treasury; and from that battery all the works of republicanism are to be beaten down and erased.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to J. Dickinson (19 December 1801)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

Warren Farrell photo
Ingo Molnar photo
Jonah Goldberg photo

“I saw a dream, Earth safe and green. No hunger no war, water so clean. I’ll work for the world that I saw, set my mind and say insha Allah.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

Subhanallah, Alhamdulillah and Insha Allah
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

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)

Gaurav Sharma (author) photo
Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo
Valentina Lisitsa photo

“If the question [about if there were only one composer in the world I could play] is purely ‘original’ works, no transcriptions, then Beethoven.”

Valentina Lisitsa (1973) Ukrainian-American classical pianist

pianistmagazine.com https://www.pianistmagazine.com/News-and-Features/161/Exclusive_interview_with_pianist_Valentina_Lisitsa/.

Sharron Angle photo

“We need to have policies that stimulate the economy, and the economy is stimulated when business feels confident that we can put people back to work.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

Sharron Angle Asked Tough Policy Questions
KLAS-TV
2010-10-29
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/13412483/sharron-angle-asked-tough-policy-questions
2010-10-29
Leanne
Sharron Angle Rebuffs Press: I’ll Answer Questions When I’m the Senator
Blue Wave News
2010-10-30
http://bluewavenews.com/blog/2010/10/30/sharron-angle-rebuffs-press-ill-answer-questions-when-im-the-senator/
2010-10-30
to CBS reporter Nathan Baca, at McCarran International Airport

John Steinbeck photo

“For the first time I am working on a book that is not limited and that will take every bit of experience and thought and feeling that I have.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Journal entry (11 June 1938), published in Working Days : The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938-1941 (1990) edited by Robert DeMott

Arthur Jensen photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“You know, when you put out policy, like a 14-point plan? A lot of times in the first hour of negotiation, that 14-point plan goes astray, but you may end up with a better deal. That's the way it works. That's the way really life works. When I do a deal, I don't say, "Oh, here's 14 points."”

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

I got out and do it. I don't sit down and talk about 14 points.
Appearance at Iowa State Fair - * 2015-08-15
Donald Trump's surprisingly savvy analysis of American politics
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/16/donald-trumps-surprisingly-savvy-comment-about-american-politics/
2010s, 2015

Sarah Palin photo

“He's, I guess you could say, with all due respect, the flavor of the week because Herb Cain [sic] is the one up there who doesn’t look like he's part of that permanent political class. Herb Cain — he came from a working-class family. He's had to make it on his own all these years. We respect that.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Herman ‘Herb’ Cain — the GOP’s Miss Congeniality
The Washington Post
2011-09-28
Alexandra
Petri
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/herman-herb-cain--the-gops-miss-congeniality/2011/09/28/gIQAcAor4K_blog.html
2011-10-07
regarding Herman Cain.
2011

Joan Miró photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Neal Stephenson photo
George W. Bush photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Tim Minchin photo

“By definition, (I begin),
alternative medicine (I continue)
has either not been proved to work,
or has been proved not to work.
You know what they call alternative medicine that has been proved to work?
Medicine.”

Tim Minchin (1975) Australian comedian, actor, singer, songwriter, music composer and musician (from British descend)

"Storm", 2013 https://books.google.ca/books?id=8u9pBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=%22tim+minchin%22+%22alternative+medicine%22+proved&source=bl&ots=tJIyTK6Fog&sig=i_Iquw3_fYAx-J8AXZd5sT-BfOk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY_4vx-ebYAhVH_IMKHQnXDJAQ6AEIiAEwEA#v=onepage&q=%22tim%20minchin%22%20%22alternative%20medicine%22%20proved&f=false

Alison Bechdel photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Robert Crumb photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike…In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude…of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment…What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 164-165.
1926

Thomas Brooks photo
Gottfried Helnwein photo
Francis de Sales photo

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

Quoted by Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus in The Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, ch. 1, Pg. 3 (1880)

“You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of "open source," and have everything magically work out.”

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

" resignation and postmortem http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html" (essay)

Calvin Coolidge photo

“It has seemed to me that our search for this mysterious factor of difference must lead to the conclusion that it was not a single factor but the united workings of at least three forces, that brought about the wide difference.”

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

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

Enoch Powell photo
Basshunter photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Everett Dean Martin photo