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.

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

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

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

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.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

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

Labor is no disgrace.

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

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

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.

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.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.