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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Labor is no disgrace.

“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.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

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 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.