Business

"Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery."

"A narcissist, for example, inspired by the homage paid to great painters, may become an art student; but, as painting is for him a mere means to an end, the technique never becomes interesting … The result is failure and disappointment, with ridicule instead of the expected adulation. … All serious success in work depends upon some genuine interest. … Consequently, the man whose sole concern with the world is that is shall admire him is not likely to achieve his object."

"I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar. I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life."

"What would you do if your country's welfare depended on labor? When a ship is in a storm it requires one captain."

"When I was young I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work."

"Nobody would work for starvation wages if he were not in a situation in which he preferred such wages to not working at all."

"Have you beheld a man skillful in his work? Before kings is where he will station himself; he will not station himself before commonplace men."

"You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards, So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod."

"We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men."

"The work whereby men gain a livelihood involves mental and moral mutilation, unless it be done in the spirit of religion and culture."

"Things may be traded in the city but it is the fisherman who brings in the food supply."

"Work is valued by the social value of the worker."

"The men at the factory are old and cunning"

"Understanding how the agricultural revolution transformed human societies was once no more than a question of intellectual curiosity. Now, though, it has taken on a more practical and urgent aspect. Many of the challenges created by the agricultural revolution, such as the problem of scarcity, have largely been solved by technology – yet our preoccupation with hard work and unrestrained economic growth remains undimmed."

"I just don't understand the world's unhealthy obsession with work. Its all about vanity anyway. Ooh, look how hard I worked! And what a good work I did. Well screw you, workie. Get lost. Shut up. We're trying to listen to records here."

"I suddenly felt insecure and feared becoming an employee of some firm that would turn me into a corporate slave with "work ethics" (whenever I hear the word work ethics I interpret inefficient mediocrity)."

"Laborare est orare. [To work is to pray.] By the Puritan moralist the ancient maxim is repeated with a new and intenser significance. The labor which he idealizes is not simply a requirement imposed by nature, or a punishment for the sin of Adam. It is itself a kind of ascetic discipline, more rigorous than that demanded of any order of mendicants—a discipline imposed by the will of God, and to be undergone, not in solitude, but in the punctual discharge of secular duties. It is not merely an economic means, to be laid aside when physical needs have been satisfied. It is a spiritual end, for in it alone can the soul find health, and it must be continued as an ethical duty long after it has ceased to be a material necessity."

"I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts."

"Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine."

"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. He lives and labors and hopes."

"This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! ... It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. ... If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, … it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business."

"Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse."

"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"

"Nothing tends to materialize man and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind more than the extreme division of labor."

"Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and...Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

"Il est bien malaisé (puisqu’il faut enfin m’expliquer) d’ôter à des insensés des chaînes qu’ils révèrent."

"Labor is not a commodity, but a creative force."

"The actual writing of a novel is extremely hard work, but it's very hard to persuade a reader that it is."

"The bourgeoisie first betrayed society through capitalism and finance, and now labor betrays it by embracing a scheme of things which sees profit only, not duty and honor, in work. This view will seem hopelessly unrealistic to those who do not admit that sentiment toward the whole is the only ultimate means of measuring value."

"The idea that work is something apportioned out by men leaves people discontent with their portion and dubious about whether work is a good thing at all. … The ancient injunction to labor fades when we regard our work as cut out for us by men, who, by present dogma, are no better than ourselves. That curious modern hypostatization “service” is often called in to substitute for the now incomprehensible doctrine of vocation. It tries to secure subordination by hypothesizing something larger than the self, which turns out, however, to be only a multitude of selfish selves. The familiar change from quality to quantity may again be noted; one serves not the higher part of the self (this entails hierarchy) … but merely consumer demand. And who admires those at the top of a hierarchy of consumption? Man as a consuming animal is thus seen to be not enough."

"Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor."

"They are usually denominated labor-saving machines, but it would be more just to call them labor-doing machines."

"The inventor...looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization."

"Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma."

"Creativity is an integral part of our personality."

"We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke: 'Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we." "They hunt old trails" said Cyril, "very well; But when did woman ever yet invent?'"

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

"He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers."

"This is a man's invention and his hand."

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it."

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple of them and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

"May I pack all inventions in burlaps and hide them in corners of Einsteins’ brains."

"I have always found It in mine own experience an easier matter to devise manie and profitable inventions, than to dispose of one of them to the good of the author himself."

"Creativity perpetually invents itself."

"The human imagination leaps to form the whole, to complete the scene in order to make sense of it. The instantaneous way this is done shows how we are driven to construct the remainder of the scene. To fill the gaps is essential if the scene is to have meaning. That we may do this in misleading ways — at times in neurotic or paranoid ways — does not gainsay the central point. Our passion for form expresses our yearning to make the world adequate to our needs and desires, and, more important, to experience ourselves as having significance."

"Imagination is the outreaching of mind... the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images and every sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious. It is the capacity to "dream dreams and see visions...""

"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem."

"Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it."

"Electric telegraphs, printing, gas, Tobacco, balloons, and steam, Are little events that have come to pass Since the days of the old régime. And, spite of Lemprière's dazzling page, I'd give—though it might seem bold— A hundred years of the Golden Age For a year of the Age of Gold."

"There is an unlucky tendency to allow every new invention to add to life's complications, and every new power to increase life’s hustling; so that, unless we can dominate the mischief, we are really the worse off instead of the better."