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

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Work

Love Friendship Happiness Hope Fear Courage Death Life Time War Peace Freedom Truth Wisdom Knowledge Science Art Music Nature Money Work Power God Beauty Laughter Family Success and failure Change Dreams Books and reading

“Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.”
Daniel Webster (1782–1852) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (2 April 1824); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), volume iii, page 141
“Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Enlightened business is learning that competition ought not to cause bad social consequences which inevitably react upon the profits of business itself. All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: , footnote (1888 edition)
“The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition.”
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days. In public schools and in the homes of nice people it was and remains pretty much taboo to tell tales of labor's sufferings and derring-do.”
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To want a job that exercises a man’s capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the “sole prerogative” to determine the products.”
Paul Goodman (1911–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately you occasionally find men disgrace labor.”
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Midland International Arbitration Union, Birmingham, United Kingdom (1877)
“The most barbarous fact in all christendom is the labor market. The mere term sufficiently expresses the animalism of commercial civilization. They who buy and they who sell in the labor market are alike dehumanized by the inhuman traffic in the brains and blood and bones of human beings.”
Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) said by 1926 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the national pie. Labor is fighting for a larger pie.”
Walter Reuther (1907–1970) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Writing in The New Republic, Vol. 114 (1946)thumb|We live in a world in which the common denominator that binds the human family together has been reduced to its simplest fundamental term—human survival.
“The crisis of production today is the crisis of the antagonism between manual and intellectual labor. The problem of modern philosophy from Descartes in the sixteenth century to Stalinism in 1950 is the problem of the division of labor between the intellectuals and the workers.”
C. L. R. James (1901–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marx explains the alienation of labor as exemplified in, first, the relation of the worker to the product of his labor and, second, the relation of the worker to his own activity. P. 276”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...organized labor...rushes to support the party without demanding a turn away from corporatism toward workers’ needs. This is the logic of the lesser of two evils. It tethers labor to a relentless slide deeper into the corporate power pits year after year.”
Ralph Nader (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Slaves are men and women who labor for no pay. Over there are men who do no labor for no pay. The similarity is enough so that they might make the mistake themselves.”
Samuel R. Delany (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.”
Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Osmond Kessler Fraenkel, Clarence Martin Lewis, The Curse of Bigness: Miscellaneous Papers of Louis D. Brandeis (1965), p. 43.
“It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.”
Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.”
Russell Baker (1925–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a result of this continuous improvement of productivity through the division of labor and technical advancement, one hour's labor today is worth about 25 times more than it was in the mid-19th century [....] Growth and productivity alone are capable of raising real wages in the long run.”
Johan Norberg (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“in any economic system there are numerous different forms of labor that exist side by side, but there is always one figure of labor that exerts hegemony over the others. This hegemonic figure serves as a vortex that gradually transforms other figures to adopt its central qualities.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“affective labor is biopolitical production in that it directly produces social relationships and forms of life. … When affective production becomes part of waged labor it can be experienced as extremely alienating: I am selling my ability to make human relationships, something extremely intimate, at the command of the client and the boss.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the contemporary economy, however, and with the labor relations of post-Fordism, mobility increasingly defines the labor market as a whole, and all categories are tending toward the condition of mobility and cultural mixture common to the migrant. **133”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In fact, the old Marxist distinctions between productive and unproductive labor, as well as that between productive and reproductive labor, which were always dubious, should now be completely thrown out.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Contemporary capitalist production is characterized by a series of passages that name different faces of the same shift: from the hegemony of industrial labor to that of immaterial labor, from Fordism to post-Fordism, and from the modern to the postmodern.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The capitalist call workers to the factory, for example, directing them to collaborate and communicate in production and giving them the means to do so. In the paradigm of immaterial production, in contrast, labor itself tends to produce the means of interaction, communication, and cooperation for production directly. Affective labor always directly constructs a relationship. (147)”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) first seen 1823 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Justice William Johnson (12 June 1823)
“The mismatch problem occurs as the workers required by companies for their vacancies are difficult to fill up due to shortage of talents in the labor pool. An Asian Development Bank study said labor mismatch is one of the culprits behind the country’s slow economic growth and that the mismatch may be caused by too many highly educated people chasing too few jobs in the country.”
Francis Escudero (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the postindustrial age, labor is seen as essentially uninvolved in the social process because there is no need for assertive labor.”
Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bourgeoisie is the first class that has learned to say I and that at the same time has the experience of labor. All older class narcissisms can base themselves “only” on struggle, military heroism, and the grandiosity of rulers. When the bourgeois says “I” the idea of the pride of labor, of productive accomplishment can also be heard for the first time.”
Peter Sloterdijk (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the slave owner is restricted in his ability to manipulate his labor supply, for he must protect his investment in slaves by feeding them during times when they do not labor. In contrast, capitalist entrepreneurs can hire and fire laborers or very their wages in response to changing circumstances.”
Eric Wolf (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We cannot have the government or the Labor party go to the next election with a person leading the party and a person floating around as the potential alternative leader. Anybody who enters the ballot tonight should do it on the following conditions: that if you win you're Labor leader, that if you lose you retire from politics.”
Julia Gillard (born 1961) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Australia politics: Gillard, Rudd in leadership vote", in BBC News website, 26 June 2013
“The circulating medium being issued only by those who labor, they would suddenly become invested with all the wealth and all the power; and those who did not labor, be they ever so rich now, would as suddenly become poor and powerless.”
Josiah Warren (1798–1874) said by 1874 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children … It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.”
Kailash Satyarthi (born 1954) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi Are Awarded Nobel Peace Prize" by Alan Cowell and Declan Walsh, in The New York Times (10 October 2014)
“In all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of the consumer, it is in the consumer's best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and of trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price.”
Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) said by 1912 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A parallel case was the Fugitive Slave Act. Article IV of the Constitution says that any person held to the service or laborer in any state escaping to another state shall not be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be returned to the one to whom the service or labor is due. This is the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution.”
Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Essentially what Lincoln said is slavery is a form of theft, the theft of labor, one person stealing another person's labor without that person’s permission.”
Eric Foner (born 1943) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Lincoln's Nuanced View of Slavery Explained By Renowned Historian", by Michelle Merlin, The Register Citizen (9 August 2012)
“Most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor—at least so long as they had an alternative. To make sure that people accepted wage labor, the classical political economists actively advocated measures to deprive people of their traditional means of support.”
Michael Perelman (economist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is neither capital nor labor but management that brings success, since management will attract capital, and capital can employ labor.”
Henry J. Heinz (1844–1919) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Henry J. Heinz, cited in: John Woolf Jordan (1915). Genealogical and Personal History of Western Pennsylvania. p. 38
“The underlying principle of specialization is division of labor; but the term division of labor has become associated with the individual worker, whereas specialization is, in general, far reaching in its effects, and influences industrial enterprises of all kinds.”
Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The future of America is dependent upon the caliber of management to be found in the ranks of business and industry. It is management that sets the pace and motivates labor to do its job. It is the combination of a courageous, competent management and a high-moraled, highly productive labor force that makes more things available for more people, and therefore, increases the standard of living.”
Lawrence A. Appley (1904–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rigors of membership in the Progress Labor Party and its Stalinist tendencies only create a mental brick wall for the members of the sect. The Progress Labor Party and its vacuum-minded Communists should not be marked for government control merely because they are Communists. The illegal actions of PL do,…”
Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With their expulsion from the crafts and the devaluation of reproductive labor poverty became feminized, and to enforce men's "primary appropriation" of women's labor, a new patriarchal order was constructed, reducing women to a double dependence: on employers and on men.”
Silvia Federici (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any job that pays $2.13 an hour is not a job. It's indentured servitude. All labor has dignity and the way that we give labor dignity is by paying people the respect and the value that they are worth... We have to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born 1989) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Twitter Post, (31 May 2019)
“Focusing on other forms of crime in the fields, we would finally ask if the DOD buys table grapes from the numerous growers who daily violate State and Federal minimum wage and child labor laws, who employ illegal foreign labor, and who do not deduct social security payments from farmworkers’ wages?”
Dolores Huerta (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is sad for us to report this, but the clock has been turned back and California agriculture, with the exception of a handful of contracts that we still hold, we now have the labor contractor, the crew leader system back again, we now have child labor back again.”
Dolores Huerta (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All we have is our ability to labor and the capitalist class have not that one commodity; they have the factories, they have the land, they have the railroad but they have not the labor power, the power of wealth producing.”
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is less violence against labor today, but there are more legal restrictions. There are more attempts to invade the rights of labor by repressive legislation and by all kinds of restrictions.”
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is only by labor, incessant labor, in season and out of season, that we can create such a public sentiment as we need”
Abby Kelley Foster (1811–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The yacht of the millionaire incorporates a million days' labor which might have been given to abolishing the slums, and every day it runs the labor of hundreds of men is withdrawn from the production of helpful things for humanity.”
Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The United States' labor laws are outdated, the National Labor Relations Board is still a husk of itself, understaffed and weakened after decades of neglect-and yet, there is a great and mighty wave of organizing happening regardless. (p. xxvii)”
Kim Kelly (journalist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source