Work

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here. ~~ Harry S. Truman

The essence of a general's job is to assist in developing a clear sense of purpose . to keep the junk from getting in the way of important things. ~~ Lieutenant General Walter F. Ulmer

He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward. ~~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs. ~~ John Osborne

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that ... ~~ George Carlin

More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies. ~~ Rudyard Kipling

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. ~~ Peter Drucker

If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our backs. ~~ William Feather

A man's work is his dilemma: his job is his bondage, but it also gives him a fair share of his identity and keeps him from being a bystander in somebody else's world. ~~ Melvin Maddocks

The secret joy in work is contained in one word--excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. ~~ Pearl Buck

The only person who had his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe. ~~ Unattributed

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart. ~~ Jerome K. Jerome

It's all in the day's work, as the huntsman said when the lion ate him. ~~ Charles Kingsley

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. ~~ C. Northcote Parkinson

No good workman without good tools. ~~ Thomas Fuller

The possibilities for mobilizing the experience, imaginations, and intelligence of workers, both employed and unemployed, are limitless. ~~ Emlyn Williams

When one's ill or unhappy, one needs something outside oneself to hold one up. It is a good thing, I think, when one has been knocked out of one's balance to have some external job or duty to hang on to. ~~ Aldous Huxley

"And yet," demanded Councilor Barlow, "what's he done? Has he ever done a day's work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?" "He's identified," said the first speaker, "with the great cause of cheering us all up." ~~ Arnold Bennett

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. ~~ Elbert Hubbard

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~~ Ronald Reagan

Don't condescend to unskilled labor. Try it for half a day first. ~~ Brooks Atkinson

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. ~~ Henry J. Kaiser

Whenever it is in any way possible, every boy and girl should choose as his life work some occupation which he should like to do anyhow, even if he did not need the money. ~~ William Lyon Phelps

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached on an angle. ~~ Andre Gide

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it . I would have made a terrible mother. ~~ Katharine Hepburn

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. ~~ James Howell

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things. ~~ Plato

Every artist wants his work to be permanent. But what is? The Aswan Dam covered some of the greatest art in the world. Venice is sinking. Great books and pictures were lost in the Florence floods. In the meantime we still enjoy butterflies. ~~ Romare Beardon

I thank God for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself, my work and my God. ~~ Helen Keller

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. ~~ Victor Hugo

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. ~~ Ed Sullivan

If you can laugh together, you can work together. ~~ Robert Orben

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. ~~ Robert Frost

Work is a form of nervousness. ~~ Don Herold

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?" ~~ Will Rogers

The price one pays for pursuing a profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. ~~ James Baldwin

Emperor Joseph II: "Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect."
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?" ~~ Amadeus (movie, 1984)

What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better. ~~ Doris Lessing

If you want to make certain a job gets done, give it to somebody who is really busy. They'll have their secretary do it. ~~ Joe Moore

Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what they are not. ~~ E. R. Beadle

The longer the title, the less important the job. ~~ George McGovern

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk. ~~ William Howard Taft

Your preoccupation should be on doing what you do as well as you can. What your co-workers say about you, what your opponent is doing -- that doesn't matter. ~~ Jay Leno

Careers, like rockets, don't always take off on schedule. The key is to keep working on the engines. ~~ Gary Sinise

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. ~~ Richard Milhous Nixon

Surely a tired woman on her way to work at six in the morning on a subway deserves the right to get there safely . everyone who changes his or her life because of crime . have been denied a basic civil right. ~~ George Herbert Walker Bush

Maturity is the ability to do a job whether or not you are supervised, to carry money without spending it and to bear an injustice without wanting to get even. ~~ Ann Landers

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done. ~~ James Ling

Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done. ~~ Al Bernstein

The man who didn't want his wife to work has been succeeded by the man who asks about her chances of getting a raise. ~~ Earl Wilson

Retirement, we understand, is great if you are busy, rich, and healthy. But then, under those conditions, work is great too. ~~ Bill Vaughn

If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work. ~~ Jacques Cousteau

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: Whose? ~~ Don Marquis

[On being an actor] .nothing more than a worker in a service occupation . It's like being a waiter or a gas station attendant, but I'm waiting on 6 million people in a week if I'm lucky. ~~ Harrison Ford

My work is a game, a very serious game. ~~ M. C. Escher

Whenever I get wise to myself, I guess. Whenever I wake up and realize I'm not an officer and a gentleman anymore, I'm just another soda jerk out of a job. ~~ The Best Years of Our Lives (film, 1946)

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. ~~ Thomas Carlyle