Quotes About Work

49 quotes

Martin Luther made the case for ordinary work with a shoemaker. The Christian shoemaker, he wrote, does his duty by making good shoes rather than putting little crosses on them, because God is interested in good craftsmanship. Martin Luther King Jr. made the same claim for every trade: no work is insignificant, and all labor that uplifts humanity has dignity.

Karl Marx looked at the cost to the worker, observing that as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Chekhov gave the stubborn answer of people who keep going without knowing why, ending on the words we must work, just work. Victor Hugo defended the effort nobody sees, insisting that a man absorbed in thought is not idle, since there is visible labor and there is invisible labor. Oscar Wilde turned the subject upside down, calling work the curse of the drinking classes. Charles Dickens sounds almost content by comparison, working pretty hard for a sufficient living and doing well on it.
French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.

— Les Misérables

Russian author

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

— Anna Karenina

American author and journalist

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.

— A Moveable Feast

British philosopher and logician

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

— The Conquest of Happiness

English mystery and detective writer

But it is not always the people who say most who do most.

— Death Comes as the End

French writer, historian and philosopher

Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.

— Candide

4th-century BCE Greek philosopher

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

— The Republic

Greek philosopher

To amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously.

— The Nicomachean Ethics

British writer and physician

‎A change of work is the best rest.

— The Sign of Four

5th-century BCE Chinese philosopher and politician

If a craftsman wants to do good work, he must first sharpen his tools.

— The Analects

German-born philosopher

In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.

— The Communist Manifesto

American entrepreneur; co-founder of Apple Inc.

The Only Way to Do Great Work is To Love What You Do

— Steve Jobs: His Own Words and Wisdom

German-born Dutch Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim

As long as you're in the food business, why not make sweets?

— The Diary of a Young Girl

English computer scientist

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

— Computing machinery and intelligence

German priest and theologian

Being by his faith replaced afresh in paradise and created anew, he (the believer)does not need works for his justification, but that he may not be idle, but that he may exercise his own body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the sole object of pleasing God.

— On Christian Liberty

English philosopher and physician

...but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw form it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it)...

— Second Treatise of Government

Serbian-American engineer and inventor

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

— Problem of Increasing Human Energy

American author and humorist

Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you've never been hurt.

President of the United States from 1981 to 1989 and actor

I've heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance?

American businessman

I could go and buy one of the islands in the / Bahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build andcreate a new company.