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.

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

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.

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.

Labor is no disgrace.

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

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