Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“When war becomes a trade, it benefits, like all other trades, from the division of labour.”
Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) said by 1832 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“New Labour, New Black Rod.”
Dennis Skinner (born 1932) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A reference to Labour's election campaign slogan "New Labour, New Britain". The Daily Telgraph (1997).
“The Labour Party doesn't support a second referendum”
Diane Abbott (born 1953) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diane Abbott: Listen to CBI and NHS' on Brexit migration" BBC News (17 December 2017).
“Today a new generation has taken charge of Labour. A new generation that understands the core of change”
Ed Miliband (born 1969) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: First speech as Leader of the Labour Party (25 September 2010)
“[T]he symbols of algebra, when employed in abstruse and complex theoretical investigations, constitute a sort of thought-saving machine, by whose aid a person skilled in its use can solve problems respecting quantities, and dispense with the mental labour of thinking of the quantities denoted by the symbols, except at the beginning and the end of the operation.”
William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) said by 1872 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Labour Party is the sister Party for the Democrats and their progressive views are the ones that we are most aligned with.”
Harriet Harman (born 1950) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Question Time, 18 September 2008.
“Although he is disappointed, I know he will step forward and play a really important part in Labour’s future.”
Harriet Harman (born 1950) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On David Miliband's narrow defeat to become Leader of the Labour Party, September 27, 2010.
“Now, many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists - and we all love the red squirrel. But there is one ginger rodent which we never want to see again - Danny Alexander.”
Harriet Harman (born 1950) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: At the Scottish Labour Conference, 30 October, 2010. Harman later apologised for the comment.
“Sexism in politics is nothing new when you're standing for election. But don't stand for election and it's almost as bad. Shockingly, David Cameron thought it acceptable to claim this week that my decision not to run for the Labour leadership was because my husband, Ed Balls, "stopped [me] from standing.”
Yvette Cooper (born 1969) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why I'm not standing for Labour leader – this time" The Guardian (28 May 2010).
“This relationship is the foundation for the argument, made by some trade unionists and labour advocates, that high wages can actually be "good for business". The precedent set by Henry Ford in 1914, who offered workers $5.00 per day (a very high wage at the time) so they could afford to buy the same cars they made, is often invoked.”
Jim Stanford (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Keynes tried to show that market economies could settle in equilibrium states in which the labour market did not clear, and in which the level of unemployment was high. He believed that this was due to a particular example of market failure, developed in his concept of effective demand.”
Paul Ormerod (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are unwanted emotions and pain that goes along with any birth. Preston insists the Scientology-friendly labour doesn't forbid the mum-to-be from yelling out in pain. Screaming is fine... It's the words. If you can avoid saying certain phrases and words... Just try to keep it as quiet as possible. Of course, you are going to groan and yell. It hurts. Just keep it to a minimum.”
John Travolta (born 1954) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Travolta supports Cruise's silent birth method" The Hindustan Times. (New Delhi: April 5, 2006).
“I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1970) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Colette, December 28, 1916
“'I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.'”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As Home Secretary in a 1910 Departmental Paper. The original document is in the collection of Asquith's papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Also quoted in Clive Ponting, "Churchill" (Sinclair Stevenson 1994)
“I consider that every workman is well advised to join a trade union. I cannot conceive how any man standing undefended against the powers that be in this world could be so foolish, if he can possibly spare the money from the maintenance of his family, not to associate himself with an organisation to protect the rights and interests of labour.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (30 May 1911)
“If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling. Corrupt successes, disgraceful failures, or sheeplike vegetation are all it has to offer. I prefer Art, which gives me a sixth sense of beauty, with self-respect: perhaps also an immortal reputation in return for honest endeavour in a labour of love.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of the things Mussolini has done, and some that he is threatening to do go further in the direction of Socialism than the English Labour Party could yet venture if they were in power.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to a friend, "Bernard Shaw's Defence of Mussolini" (7 February 1927)
“When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) said by 1626 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Since labour is motion, time is its natural measure.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The circulation of capital realizes value, while living labour creates value.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so the division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unlimited exploitation of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their power to compete.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a beast of toil an ox is fixed capital. If he is eaten, he no longer functions as an instrument of labour, nor as fixed capital either.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have just seen that, apart from money-capital, circulating capital is only another name for commodity-capital. But to the extent that labour power circulates in the market,it is not capital, no form of commodity-capital. It is not capital at all; the labourer is not a capitalist, although he brings a commodity to market, namely his own skin.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The capitalist cannot store labour-power in warehouses after he has bought it, as he may do with the raw material.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The labour-power is a commodity, not capital, in the hands of the labourer, and it constitutes for him a revenue so long as he can continuously repeat its sale; it functions as capital after its sale, in the hands of the capitalist, during the process of production itself.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Long hours of labour seem to be the secret of the rational and healthful processes, which are to raise the condition of the labourer by an improvement of his mental and moral powers and to make a rational consumer out of him.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
Voltaire (1694–1778) said by 1778 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I only acknowledge one nobility—that of labour.”
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in the Nazi Party official newspaper Völkischer Beobachter (November 21, 1936), Richard Grunberger, The 12-year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945 (1971) p. 47
“Understand that all the evils from which you suffer, you yourselves cause by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) first seen 1765 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Plays of William Shakespeare, Vol. I (1765), Preface
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) first seen 1750 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No. 68 (10 November 1750)
“Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It appears to me, that any explanation of the cheapness of manufactured articles, as consequent upon the division of labour, would be incomplete if the following principle were omitted to be stated.”
Charles Babbage (1791–1871) said by 1871 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of our readers, — that the division of labour can be applied with equal success to mental as to mechanical operations, and that it ensures in both the same economy of time.”
Charles Babbage (1791–1871) said by 1871 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are in the Exhibition some beautiful examples of such amongst the productions of other countries as well as of our own. They are made by the united labour of many women. The cost of a piece of lace will consist of:”
Charles Babbage (1791–1871) said by 1871 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labour of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.”
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) said by 1744 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Such hath it been — shall be — beneath the sun The many still must labour for the one!”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How happy he who crowns in shades like these, A youth of labour with an age of ease.”
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) said by 1774 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am uncompromising in the matter of woman's rights. In my opinion she should labour under no legal disability not suffered by man, I should treat the daughters and sons on a footing of perfect equality.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mohandas Gandhi, 17th October 1929. Quoted in Gandhi: The Essential Writings. Judith M. Brown, Oxford University Press, 1998 (pp. 228-9). Also quoted in Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World in…
“Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him?”
George Orwell (1903–1950) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Thoughts on the Common Toad", Tribune (12 April 1946)
“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have labour'd hard indeed, & have been borne on angel's wings. Till we meet I beg of God our Saviour to be with you & me, & yours & mine. Pray give my & my wife's love to Mrs Butts & Family, & believe me to remain.”
William Blake (1757–1827) said by 1827 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Letters Of William Blake (1956), p. 90
“Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party, who are content when they have enough.”
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source