LABOR QUOTES III
quotations about labor
It has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
"Fragments of a Tariff Discussion", December 1, 1847
In proportion as labor is divided, arts are perfected.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
It's hard to find cheap labor in the land of the brave and free. And the only thing that's better, that's if they work for free.
RICHARD FORD
Poems Written by a Government Prisoner in Georgia, USA
Labor in all its variety, corporeal and mental, is the instituted means for the methodical development of all our powers, under the direction and control of will.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Gold-Foil
By persistent labor man may attain to all excellence.
DEMOSTHENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Providence has decreed that those common acquisitions, money, gems, plate, noble mansions, and dominion, should be sometimes bestowed on the indolent and unworthy; but those things which constitute our true riches, and which are properly our own, must be procured by our own labor.
ERASMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The qualities of labor, like tools,
Grow brighter when used.
SUSAN H. BOGGS
"Labor", Poems
But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.
LEO TOLSTOY
Anna Karenina
The only real riches are labor; everything else is but the sign or abuse of it.
LEMONTEY
attributed, A Concise Exposition of the Doctrine of Association
The motto marked upon our foreheads, written upon our door-posts, channeled in the earth, and wafted upon the waves, is and must be, "Labor is honorable, and idleness is dishonorable."
T. CARLYLE
attributed, Life's Common Way
Under the regime of property, labor is not a condition, but a privilege.
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON
What is Property?
It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage: that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships; that has given us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism.
JOHN RAMSAY MCCULLOCH
The Principles of Political Economy
Without work men are utterly undone.
NEVIL SHUTE
Ruined City
One of the huge disadvantages of being an American is that most of the hard labor is done for us.
JOSH DAFFERN
"10 Things That Will Ruin Your 2016 If You're Not Careful", Patheos, February 17, 2016
As salt savors the broth, so does labor give a relish to pleasure.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Labour is good for a man, bracing up his energies to conquest,
And without it life is dull, the man perceiving himself useless.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
How happy he who crowns in shades like these, A youth of labour with an age of ease.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Deserted Village
It has been said "that he who works prays;" and certainly one of the best prayers that a working man with a large and young family can offer up is to steadily stick to his work. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, was the son of a working carpenter, and it is believed by many Theologians that our Saviour followed that trade (whatever it was in those days) until he was thirty years of age. If then God's only Son, the right hand of the throne of heaven, the King of men, the only sinless, spotless, perfect child, youth, and man, was a labourer, IS THERE NOT DIGNITY IN LABOUR? The happiest man is the working man, and if there is any real happiness in this world it is in the neat but humble cottage, where peace and love reign, and the industrious wife is the true helpmate of the working man; and not in the palace, where the bloated aristocrat, recovering from an attack of gout or some other punishment for excess, sits, trying to kill time, with bleared eyes (and often of idiotic expression) gazing into vacancy, surrounded by all that wealth can buy or human ingenuity contrive to make him comfortable, but with all not happy.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Dignity of Labour", Short Essays
Labor, laughing at difficulties, spans majestic rivers, carries viaducts over marshy swamps, suspends bridges over deep ravines, pierces the solid mountains with the dark tunnel, blasting rocks and filling hollows, and, while linking together all nations of the earth pities the proud fool and laughs him to scorn. He shall pass to dust, forgotten; but Labor will live forever, glorious in its conquests and monuments, and will keep organized no matter how many temporary defeats it endures.
NEWMAN HALL
"The Dignity of Labor", The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
attributed, A Martin Luther King Treasury