Jobs quotes
13.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside jobs — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Being alive is so extraordinary I don’t know why people limit it to riches, pride, security—all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the house. And they have to get a car. You can’t see anything from a car. It’s moving too fast. People take vacations. That’s their reward—the vacation. Why not the life?"
"The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle, hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
"Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date."
"But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees."
"Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that's what everybody needs to know."
"I wanted to live the life, a different life. I didn't want to go to the same place every day and see the same people and do the same job. I wanted interesting challenges."
"Friendship is a full-time job."
"So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart."
"Far from the richest rapper, but my biggest personal achievement thus far in my life has been retiring my mom early from her job at the Post Office. It's a tiny payback for the sacrifices she made that allowed me to chase a far-fetched dream of becoming a successful artist. I'm forever grateful."
"It is the woman who controls the whole house...it's her job, that's what she's supposed to do...We have to change this idea that women are not only supposed to work in the house...but she also has the ability to go outside and do business, to be a doctor, to be a teacher, to be an engineer, she should be allowed to have any job she likes. She should be treated equally, as men are."
"I don't know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. It is not my job to lull you with a false sense of the rightness of the universe. This wonderful and terrible occupation of recreating the world in a different way, each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. I stir the soup. I inconvenience you. I make your nose run and your eyes water."
"I have learned that it is no one elses job to take care of me but me."
"A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job"
"You have to believe that you can act and that you're the right person for the job but I think it's good to not always know how you're going to do it. The fun part is trying to figure it out."
"The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."
"Steve Jobs was a digital pioneer, but when he went home, he listened to vinyl."
"How many people disapprove of the job the Conservatives are doing? Seventy percent. Of those same people, how many will vote for them again? ...Seventy percent. What the fuck? Where did they take this poll, at an S&M parlor?"
"If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with."
"Who dares to strike today, when having the security of a permanent job is itself becoming a privilege?"
""Jobs for every American" is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it and create an income-maintenance system so every single American has the dignity and the wherewithal for shelter, basic food, and medical care. I'm talking about welfare for all. Without it, you're going to have warfare for all."
