Labor Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Capitalism cannot be reduced to one or a few features, but it does possess one relationship, central to its existence and operation, that constitutes the essence of inequality and ineradicable instability: the wage-labor-capital connection that dwells at the heart of the system.

Herbert Schiller

We cannot have the government or the Labor party go to the next election with a person leading the party and a person floating around as the potential alternative leader. Anybody who enters the ballot tonight should do it on the following conditions: that if you win you're Labor leader, that if you lose you retire from politics.

We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy—not so that we could wake up" to reality; reality is boring—but so that we can take up the new dreams of channelling our energies and labor towards the exploration of our universe, towards the fostering of a new people, who are healthier, stronger, more intelligent, more beautiful, more athletic.

Richard B. Spencer

No one lusting for blood is ever innocent. Or satisfied. I have not been innocent. Or satisfied. Just as the man who wants silver will not be satisfied with silver, a man who wants the blood of another will not be satisfied with having that blood, nor the woman with jewels be satisfied with jewels, and the man who wants women will not be satisfied with women. Don't try telling me different. Haven't I looked about me in the city and seen how all labor is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not filled? Don't I know myself that no want is ever satisfied? Wishes are granted, goals attained. But wants? Forget them. They live as long as the person they inhabit.

The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West.

George Washington Carver

Though to us — the toilers — it is night still, to Him — the Master who watcheth our labor, and to them — our fellows whose labor is done — "there is light with a clear sky." Though to us, down below, there is but the deafening roar, the shriek of discord, the wail of pain, blent in one jargon of strange sounds which have no chime; to them, above in the high, calm silence, there are heard only the striking of the hour which tells of the sure speed of time, and the voice of the joy-bells already ringing for the world's great bridal.

William Morley Punshon

St. Paul earned his living most of the time by hard labor and constantly reminded his converts that they must not defraud each other, but love one another and work with their own hands. The same rule of life is applied by the laws governing the early monastic orders.

Robert Hunter (author)

If a woman with property needs the ballot, a woman who has nothing but her labor power needs two ballots.

Gertrude Breslau Hunt

... the Democrats know that no matter how many GATTs, NAFTAs, empty OSHAs, and other betrayals... they heap on those labor leaders, they can be had because, once again, the Republicans are deemed worse.

You're a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your future less secure; each year you retreat a few steps more into the world of slavery.

George Lincoln Rockwell

No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.

Wealth in the hands of the holders of wealth is not capital until it controls the means of production, buys labor power, and puts it to work, continuously expanding surpluses by intensifying productivity through an ever-rising curve of technological inputs.

People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor. The fulfillment of humankind as human beings lies, then, in the fulfillment of the world. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure, and permanently threatened—if their work does not belong to them—the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I detest so much... those persons, who insist upon telling you everything — who labor every point, as the lawyers say, as if they thought all excellence consisted in length.

Mary Russell Mitford

The labor of thinking was so great to me, that having once come to a conclusion upon any subject, I would rather persist in it, right or wrong, than be at the trouble of going over the process again to revise and rectify my judgment.

Maria Edgeworth

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

What we object to is the division of society into two classes, of which one class owns the capital, and the other performs the labor.

Orestes A. Brownson

They Will Ask: "Who gave you the Teaching?"
Answer: "The Mahatma of the East."
They Will Ask: "Where does He live?"
Answer: "The abode of the Teacher not only cannot be made known but cannot even be uttered. Your question shows how far you are from the understanding of the Teaching. Even humanly you must realize how wrong your question is."
They Will Ask: "When can I be useful?"
Answer: "From this hour unto eternity."
"When should I prepare myself for labor?"
"Lose not an hour!"
"And when will the call come?"
"Even sleep vigilantly."
"How shall I work until this hour?"
"Enhancing the quality of labor."

Nicholas Roerich

It is the big enterprises which occupy the strategic centers. Most small businessmen, independents, professionals and even farmers gain their livelihood largely as suppliers or as distributors for the large enterprises. It is the large enterprises which establish the price and wage policies of the nation. The pattern of union-management relations is set by the contracts drawn between big labor and big business. Governmental regulations grow up to harness and channel the economic power and practice of large enterprise. The personnel policies adopted by the large industry become the models for the entire industrial society.

Delbert C. Miller

The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts: […] I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.

Labor can and will become its own employer through co-operative association.

Leland Stanford

To want a job that exercises a man's capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the sole prerogative to determine the products.