Quotes about work

It was the classic question; you had two tasks to perform and one promised to be much harder and more unpleasant than the other. Did you tackle the tough one first and get it out of the way? Or did you postpone, and hope that before you came to the hard part you might be struck by a meteorite, or that a solar flare would wipe out life in the solar system?

As usual he looked tired, but that was normal. Geniuses worked harder than anyone else, not less hard.

The greater efficiency which education gives to all sorts of labor, except the rudest, makes up in a short period for the time lost in acquiring it.

He was, if not happy, too busy to be unhappy.

It's like the old dilemma: You can't get a job without experience, but you can't get experience because no one will give you a job.

Making a life, not just a living, is essential to one seeking wholeness. Our hunger turns out to be for something different, not something more. p. 323

Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations' true nature is that of a community of humans.

You might look at someone successful and think they got lucky – a case of being in the right place at the right time perhaps? The truth is, every piece of good fortune is the result of hours, or even years, of hard work and preparation.

I would rather do a dangerous job than a job that makes me comatose with boredom.

“I have sought,” he said, “for long years I have laboured; but I have not found her. I have not rested, I have not repined, and I have not seen her; now my strength is gone. Where I lie down worn out other men will stand, young and fresh. By the steps that I have cut they will climb; by the stairs that I have built they will mount. They will never know the name of the man who made them. At the clumsy work they will laugh; when the stones roll they will curse me. But they will mount, and on my work; they will climb, and by my stair! They will find her, and through me! And no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself.”

I had work to be getting on with. I’ve always had work to be getting on with. It’s what the universe was put there for: to give me things to do.

...let us sell our labour for what it is worth. And if an industry cannot buy our labour, let that industry die. But let us not sell our labour cheap to keep an industry alive.