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

Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.

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.

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

“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.

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.