To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.

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.

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

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.

Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.

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

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.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

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

“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.

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.