Labor Quotes

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
Abraham Lincoln

Higher, Superior, Fruit

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.
Thomas Jefferson

Good, Men, Government

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Humanity, Dignity, Excellence

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.
Barack Obama

Work, Family, Health

Labor Quote

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.
George Washington

Fire, Keep, Conscience

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
James Whistler

Vision, Artist, Paid

I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.
Martin Luther

Heart, Hell, Afraid

The end of labor is to gain leisure.
Aristotle

End, Gain, Leisure

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Confucius

Learning, Lost, Thought

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert Camus

Rock, Thought, Reason

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
Karl Marx

Living, Dead, Lives

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
Theodore Roosevelt

Courage, Through, Energy

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.
Theodore Roosevelt

Essential, Era, Organize

Labor gives birth to ideas.
Jim Rohn

Ideas, Birth, Gives

There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.
Bill Cosby

Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
Thomas Merton

Loneliness, Here, Vision

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
Alexander Pope

Business, Nice, Person

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
Thomas Merton

Peace, Truth, War

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.
Saint Augustine

Beautiful, Wise, Read

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
John D. Rockefeller

Living, Whether, Hand

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
Soren Kierkegaard

Struggle, Woman, Giving

The man who has the will to undergo all labor may win to any good.
Martin Luther

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
Thomas A. Edison

Thinking, Avoid, Expedient

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.
Liberty Hyde Bailey

Good, Someone, Effort

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
Victor Hugo

Thought, Invisible, Idle

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Aldous Huxley

Good, Bad, Book

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Mind, Body, Strengthen

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.
Victor Hugo

Work, Eyes, Both

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.
Booker T. Washington

Life, Common, Top

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.
Victor Hugo

Thought, Pleasure, Intellect

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