Work Quotes — page 55

[O]ur conception of Chance is now utterly different from that of yore. Where we cannot predict, where we do not find order and regularity, there we should now assert... that something else than Chance is at work. What we are to understand …

Its contempt of simple pleasures which everyone could enjoy but for its folly? Its eyeless vulgarity which has destroyed art, the one certain solace of labour?

The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.

I prefer to call them [Labour] the Socialist Party, because I consider we are a better Labour Party than they are. I don't believe their programme is to the interests of Labour, but to its detriment.

The greatest minds are marked by nothing more distinctly than an inconceivable humility, and acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from everybody, and do anything that anybody asks, so long as …

The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all.

The statement that cartels can abolish crises is a fable spread by bourgeois economists who at all costs desire to place capitalism in a favorable light. On the contrary, when monopoly appears in certain branches of industry, it increases …

to save the work while it is begun.

There is only one thing which I feel is worth giving one's whole strength to, and that is the binding together of all classes of our people in an effort to make life in this country better in every sense of the word. That is the main end …

Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities

Thus monopoly is limited by competition, and no owner, whether of labour, land or capital, can, theoretically speaking,obtain a larger share of produce for it than what other owners of exactly the same kind of property are willing to …

But all this work... had not the right technical sanction.., thickness of the arches was determined by intuition and practice... But can... [one] satisfy the sciences with these? Can we have any guarantee by these alone?

All work undertaken should be useful — not just for a day, or a year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement in living conditions or that it creates future new wealth for the Nation.

The real trouble must be that supply is somehow prevented from satisfying demand, that somewhere there is an obstacle which prevents labor from producing the things that laborers want.

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all …

We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.

Workmen's compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold consolations, if there be no employment.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, …

[I appeal to Labour supporters] to vote against themselves; it will be the greatest service to their class in getting their minds away from false ideals. Russia is a wreck. For God's sake do not let us do the same thing in this country.

The first sight of the tomb Ilario di Carreto at Lucca at once altered the course of my life for me… and from that day I left the upholsterer's business in art to those who trade in it, and have guided my work, and limited my teaching, …

Millions of human beings have labored to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves today. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labor to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.

When the speeches of Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, the worst of the predators, the wild beasts of imperialism, are repeated here by Martov in the name of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ... then I say to myself that we …

I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man's rights