All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Labor is no disgrace.

It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do.

A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.

I am a friend of the workingman, and I would rather be his friend than be one.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.