Work quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside work — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"You are right in demanding that an artist approach his work consciously, but you are confusing two concepts: the solution of a problem and the correct formulation of a problem. Only the second is required of the artist."
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know its nature. To love money is to known and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money - and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it."
"The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life."
"Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?"
"Work, especially good work, becomes easy only when desire has learnt to discipline itself."
"Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs."
"There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; alwayswe are invited to work."
"Whatever plan one makes, there is a hidden difficulty somewhere."
"I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay, a big stack of bills that gets bigger each day."
"A man perfects himself by working."
"Most inputs are useless and time is wasted in proportion to the amount that is available."
"Do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should Work is not all of life. Your co-workers shouldn't be your only friends. Schedule life and defend it just as you would an important business meeting. Never tell yourself "I'll just get it done this weekend.""
"To have meaningful work is a tremendous happiness."
"Work hard to seem infallible and others will work to find our flaws. Admit our shortcomings and others will work to help us be infallible."
"And if something should be found, particularly in the first part of the dissertation, that one is generally not accustomed to come across in scholarly writings, the reader must forgive my jocundity, just as I, in order to lighten the burden, sometimes sing at my work."
"There is a great difference between a young man looking for a situation and one looking for work."
"Abandon fancy theologies and imaginary ideas and do some ordinary daily work... {Engage in this work with} unswerving kindness and unending patience."
"I hate, simply, to work. I just hate to work, period. I am profoundly slothful. Practically inert."
"If the soul has food for study and learning, nothing is more delightful than an old age of leisure."
"I've been failing for, like, ten or eleven years. When it turns, it'll turn. Right now I'm just trying to squeeze through a very tight financial period, get the movie out, and put my things in order."
