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

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

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

“Work” does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.

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.

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

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

Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.

The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.

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.

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.

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.