Quotes about work

We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money.

Lir chiseled at the stone. It would take a month to make a perceptible impression on it. He had a few hours. Work harder, then.

The emerging picture from... studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of master associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.

Machines, no matter how sophisticated, can only follow programs. If we sleepwalk through our lives, then we’re no better than machines. Only humans are capable of a job done well -- which means thinking about the consequences of our actions. A job done well pays the bills, but it also improves the lives of everyone around us.

The most important affair in life is the choice of a calling; chance decides it. Custom makes men masons, soldiers, slaters. ...We choose our callings according as we hear this or that praised or despised in our childhood, for we naturally love truth and hate folly. ...It is custom then which... constrains nature. But sometimes nature gains the ascendancy, and preserves man's instinct, in spite of all custom, good or bad.

Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!

"Maybe I don't want to be defined by what I do. Maybe I'd like to be defined by what I am."

So many people these days, it seemed, believed that these things (personal fulfillment and self-esteem) could come only from work, not from parenting, and many people believed that having children had nothing to do with raising them.

Though the ancient world understood that work was a curse, modern industrial society spreads its gospel. The working class, Lafargue hopelessly hoped, must reject the work fetish.

As part of this experiment we must not only accept human nature but work with what we have to make it productive. We inevitably feel the need for status and recognition, so let’s not deny it. Instead, let’s cultivate such status and recognition through our excellent work. We must accept our need to belong to the group and prove our loyalty, but let’s do it in more positive ways—by questioning group decisions that will harm it in the long run, by supplying divergent opinions, by steering the group in a more rational direction, gently and strategically.

If you would savor the sweet taste of the fruit, you must water the tree,

Any act can be a prayer, if done as well as we are able.