Labour Quotes - Page 2

• The change starts within each one of us. And ends only when all children are free to be children

  Craig Kielburger

  Change, Children, Freedom

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• When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose. There's no evidence that more people with more skills would produce more jobs. There's a great deal of evidence that they produce more competition for the jobs that exist, and in turn, drive down the cost of labour. Nothing pleases a corporation more than having five people compete for the same job. Competitiveness means good times for machines, not workers, because our tax systems privilege machines over workers.A lost job can put a smile on any shareholder's face.

  Eric Reguly

  Jobs, Mean, Hard Work

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• If by gaining knowledge we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands.

  John Locke

  Health, Hands, Useless

  John Locke, John Milton (1830). “Some thoughts concerning education”, p.296

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• Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow.

  David Hume

  Collaboration, Corn, Today

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• The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal.

  Thomas Paine

  Philosophy, Teaching, School

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar”, p.197

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• The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we've created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages.

  Laurie Penny

  Order, People, Cost

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• The fabric of a mighty state, which has been reared by the labours of successive ages, could not be overturned by the misfortune of a single day, if the fatal power of the imagination did not exaggerate the real measure of the calamity.

  Edward Gibbon

  Real, History, Imagination

  Edward Gibbon (1871). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.61

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• If at any time all labour should cease, and all existing provisions be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive--all would have perished by want of subsistence.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Work, Years, People

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45”, p.157, Library of America

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• And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Work, Government, Age

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.412, Wildside Press LLC

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• Eight hours daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep.

  Robert Owen

  Sleep, Eight, Comfort

  "Foundation Axioms" of the Society for Promoting National Regeneration, 1833.

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• Today's workplace has become heartless and soulless. Employees are seen as units of labour, automatons, functionaries, objects for achieving designated tasks, and as costs to be minimised.

  Tim Field

  Bullying, Heartless, Tasks

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• I believe the prayers of 30 years ago are not lost. We may not see the results of our labour or sacrifice immediately, but in due time they will produce much fruit.

  T. B. Joshua

  Prayer, Believe, Sacrifice

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• Judge yourself and beware of passing judgement on others. In judging others we expend our energy to no purpose; we are often mistaken and easily sin. But if we judge ourselves our labour is always to our profit.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Spiritual, Judging, Judgement

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• Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it.

  Jeremy Corbyn

  Party, Abuse, Injustice

  "Jeremy Corbyn antisemitism speech in full: Labour leader vows to stamp out 'hateful language or debate' The Labour leader welcomed a response recommending immediate action for the Labour" by Lizzie Dearden, www.independent.co.uk. June 30, 2016.

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• The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labours of cabinets and foreign offices.

  Richard Cobden

  Freedom, Office, Progress

  Richard Cobden (1870). “Speeches on Questions of Public Policy”, p.228

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• Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?

  Thomas Hardy

  Three, Sake, Quarters

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the d'Ubervilles”, p.146, Xist Publishing

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• Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labour, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played, Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 'tis centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity.

  Emily Dickinson

  Horse, Children, School

  'Because I could not stop for Death' (c.1863)

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• As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.

  William Butler Yeats

  Uplifting, Dream, Spiritual

  William Butler Yeats, Ulick O'Connor (1990). “The Yeats companion”, Pavilion Books

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• O that the gods would bring to a miserable end such fictitious, crazy, deformed labours, with which the minds of the studious are blinded!

  William Gilbert

  Crazy, Science, Mind

  William Gilbert (2015). “On The Magnet”, p.79, Lulu.com

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• I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

  Nikola Tesla

  Inspirational, Idlers, May

  "My Inventions" by Nikola Tesla, (Ch. 1), 1919.

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• Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.

  Lord Kelvin

  Hard Work, Science, Discovery

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• I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race—I am ashamed to belong to such a species.

  Bertrand Russell

  Father, Hate, Pride

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.289, Routledge

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• And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

  Marcel Proust

  Past, Giving, Effort

  Marcel Proust (2010). “In Search Of Lost Time Vol 1: Swann's Way”, p.51, Random House

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• Wouldst thou enjoy a long Life, a healthy Body, and a vigorous Mind, and be acquainted also with the wonderful Works of God? labour in the first place to bring thy Appetite into Subjection to Reason.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Hard Work, Health, Science

  Benjamin Franklin (2004). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.102, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• I opposed the Suez war, I opposed the Falklands war. I opposed the Libyan bombing and I opposed the Gulf war and I never believed that any of those principled arguments lost a single vote - indeed, I think they gained support though that was not why you did it. What has been lacking in Labour politics over a long period is a principled stand

  Tony Benn

  War, Thinking, Long

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