Work

"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."

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

"Work that is pure toil, done solely for the sake of the money it earns, is also sheer drudgery because it is stultifying rather than self improving."

"Since the heart is an accumulator and transmuter of various energies, there must be more favorable conditions for arousing and attracting these energies. The most fundamental condition is work, mental as well as physical. In the motion of work, energies are gathered from space; but one must understand work as a natural process that enriches life. Thus, every kind of work is a blessing, while the vagaries of inaction are extremely harmful in a cosmic sense. Love for the endlessness of labor is in itself an initiation of considerable degree; it prepares you for the conquest of time. Being in a condition where you have conquered time guarantees you a place in the Subtle World, where work is an unavoidable condition, just as it is in the body. A complaint about having to work can only come from a slave of the body."

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve immortality through not dying."

"Zeal is proper for a task, time-wasting is taboo; anyone who wastes time on his task is neglecting his task."

"The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts."

"I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women."

"Plato said that virtue has no master. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself."

"Our characters are the result of our conduct."

"And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.""

"The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work."

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."

"It is a strange desire which men have, to seek power and lose liberty."

"Measure not the work Until the day's out and the labour done, Then bring your gauges."

"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."

"Ninety-five percent of all jobs suck, Jones. That’s why people get paid to do them."

"There’s no requirement that jobs be meaningful, Jones. If there was, half the country would be unemployed."

"Unless we abandon the work ethic of another era, ... lives may be wasted because of blind insistence that everyone must have a "job" even if the job is useless."

"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play."

"Work is healthy, you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade."

"When God wanted sponges and oysters, He made them and put one on a rock and the other in the mud. When He made man, He did not make him to be a sponge or an oyster; He made him with feet and hands, and head and heart, and vital blood, and a place to use them, and He said to him, Go Work."

"LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B."

"No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost all the evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By "play" I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive."

"Wealth is the offspring of intelligence and of work, the soul and the life of humanity. But these two forces can act only with the help of a passive element, the soil, which they make productive by their combined efforts.It would seem, therefore, that this indispensable instrument should belong to all men."

"Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted."

"The reign of capital, which denies our very existence as human beings and reduces us to ‘things’, seems very serious, methodical and disciplined. But its possessive paroxysm, its ethical rigour, its obsession with ‘doing’ all hide a great illusion: the total emptiness of the commodity spectacle, the uselessness of indefinite accumulation and the absurdity of exploitation. So the great seriousness of the world of work and productivity hides a total lack of seriousness."

"Work to me is a sacred thing."

"Researchers at the University of Oxford [recently] published the results of a survey of the world’s best artificial intelligence experts, who predicted that there was a 50 percent chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks within 45 years...the immediate concern for most people is that they will be losing their jobs... That helps explain the recent interest in a universal basic income (UBI) – a sum of money distributed equally to everyone."

"By the way, The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our ringers, dull our sight, Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, To put on when you're weary—or a stool To tumble over and vex you * * * curse that stool! Or else at best, a cushion where you lean And sleep, and dream of something we are not, But would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this * * * that, after all, we are paid The worth of our work, perhaps."

"Get leave to work In this world,—'tis the best you get at all."

"Let no one till his death Be called unhappy. Measure not the work Until the day's out and the labour done."

"Free men freely work: Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease."

"When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick. He overreaches himself, the work denies itself to him, the incarnation of the spirit no longer takes place, and to avoid the threat of senselessness he snatches after empty power. This sickness casts the genius on to the same level as those hysterical figures who, being by nature without power, slave for power, in order that they may enjoy the illusion that they are inwardly powerful, and who in this striving for power cannot let a pause intervene, since a pause would bring with it the possibility of self-reflection and self-reflection would bring collapse."

"… productivity gains frequently cause upheaval: Both capital and labor can pay a terrible price when innovation or new efficiencies upend their worlds. We need shed no tears for the capitalists (whether they be private owners or an army of public shareholders). It’s their job to take care of themselves. ... A long-employed worker faces a different equation. When innovation and the market system interact to produce efficiencies, many workers may be rendered unnecessary, their talents obsolete. Some can find decent employment elsewhere; for others, that is not an option. … The answer in such disruptions is not the restraining or outlawing of actions that increase productivity. Americans would not be living nearly as well as we do if we had mandated that 11 million people should forever be employed in farming. The solution, rather, is a variety of safety nets aimed at providing a decent life for those who are willing to work but find their specific talents judged of small value because of market forces. (I personally favor a reformed and expanded Earned Income Tax Credit that would try to make sure America works for those willing to work.) The price of achieving ever-increasing prosperity for the great majority of Americans should not be penury for the unfortunate."

"How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?"

"Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working."

"And still be doing, never done."