Motivational Quotes

Work

Working from home meant we could vary snack and coffee breaks, change our desks or view, goof off, drink on the job, even spend the day in pajamas, and often meet to gossip or share ideas. On the other hand, we bossed ourselves around, set impossible goals, and demanded longer hours than office jobs usually entail. It was the ultimate "flextime," in that it depended on how flexible we felt each day, given deadlines, distractions, and workaholic crescendos.

- Diane Ackerman

Best Quotes about Work

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 --not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.

Auden, W. H.

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.

Henry J. Kaiser

After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.

Brodsky, Joseph

It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you put in the hours.

Sam Ewing

The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Keller, Helen

I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.

Hughes, Charles Evans

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.

Ogden Nash

Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials -- to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only one woman's hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.

Mead, Margaret

10.

In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. In other cases, to get the best work out of people you may have to pretend you are not their boss and let them treat someone else like the boss, and then that whispers to you behind a fake wall and you tell them what to tell the first person. Contrary to what I believed as a little girl, being the boss almost never involves marching around, waving your arms, and chanting, " I am the boss! I am the boss!"

Tina Fey

11.

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

12.

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

Richard Bach

13.

Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.

Landers, Ann

14.

My father always told me, Find a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.

Fox, Jim

15.

Whoever does not love his work cannot hope that it will please others.

16.

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Lombardi, Vince

17.

My work is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels -- we know their names, they number a thousand for each red ribbon we wear here tonight. [Accepting his Best Actor Oscar for Philadelphia]

Hanks, Tom

18.

The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.

Lombardi, Vince

19.

A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.

W. Somerset Maugham

20.

A woman's work is never done, especially the part she asks her husband to do.

21.

Never work before breakfast. If you have to work before breakfast, get your breakfast first.

Billings, Josh

22.

Pennies do not come from heaven -- they have to be earned here on earth.

Thatcher, Margaret

23.

Getting fired is nature's way to telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place.

Hal Lancaster

24.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.

Weil, Simone

25.

No bees, no honey; no work, no money.

Proverb

26.

Anyone who thinks hard work will never hurt you has never had to pay to have it done. Jesus now has many lovers of his Heavenly Kingdom, but few bearers of his cross.

Kempis, Thomas

27.

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

In case of doubt, do a little more than you have to.

Mitchell, Warren

29.

No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.

Pavlova, Anna

30.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours --all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.

Faulkner, William

31.

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

King Jr. Martin Luther

32.

What is work and what is not work are questions that perplex the wisest of men.

Bhagavad Gita

33.

Work is life, you know, and without it, there's nothing but fear and insecurity.

Lennon, John

34.

The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.

Maxine Hong Kingston

35.

It is an article of faith in my creed to pick the man who does not take himself seriously, but does take his work seriously.

Cahill, Michael C.

36.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

Twain, Mark

37.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

38.

The object of living is work, experience, and happiness. There is joy in work. All that money can do is buy us someone else's work in exchange for our own. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

Ford, Henry

39.

A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

Carlyle, Thomas

40.

Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.

Herold, Don

41.

Of all pleasures the fruit of labor is the sweetest.

Vauvenargues, Marquis De

42.

We have always found that people are most productive in small teams with tight budgets, time lines and the freedom to solve their own problems.

Rollwagen, John

43.

If a team is to reach its potential, each player must be willing to subordinate his personal goals to the good of the team.

Wilkinson, Bud

44.

We take eagles and teach them to fly in formation.

Calloway, Wayne

45.

Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

46.

Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work.

Huxley, Aldous

47.

When I think of work, it's mostly about having control over your destiny, as opposed to being at the mercy of what's out there.

Sinise, Gary

48.

Our works decay and disappear but God gentlest works stay looking down on the ruins we toil to rear.

Smith, Dr. Walter

49.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

Hubbard, Elbert

50.

Working together, ordinary people can perform extraordinary feats. They can push things that come into their hands a little higher up, a little further on towards the heights of excellence.