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“As increased industrial efficiency makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less labor, the energies of the industrious members of the community are bent to the compassing of a higher result in conspicuous expenditure, rather than slackened to a more comfortable pace.”
Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) said by 1929 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Calling slave labor "chores" is a euphemism on par with calling Hitler a "best-selling author with a side hustle" or JFK's assassination a "bad hair day" or this a comedy show.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "U.S. History" (ff. 0:09:36) (2 August 2020)
“[In science any model depends on a pre-chosen taxonomy] a set of classifications into which we divide the enormous complexity of the real world... Land, labor, and capital are extremely heterogeneous aggregates, not much better than earth, air, fire, and water.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1986) "What Went Wrong with Economics?" in: The American Economist Vol 30 (Spring) pp. 7-8, as cited in: (2013) "What Boulding Said Went Wrong with Economics, A Quarter Century On
“The virtues, like the body, become strong more by labor than by nourishment.”
Jean Paul (1763–1825) said by 1825 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am my father's father, You are your children's guilt. In history's pity and terror The child is Aeneas again; Troy is in the nursery, The rocking horse is on fire. Child labor! The child must carry His fathers on his back.”
Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude — as Marx would say, a vampire regime of accumulated dead labor that survives only by sucking off the blood of the living.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The so-called communism of capital, that is, its drive toward an ever more extensive socialization of labor, points ambiguously toward the communism of the multitude.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“postmodern warfare thus has many of the characteristics of what economists call post-Fordist production: it is based on both mobility and flexibility; it integrates intelligence, information, and immaterial labor; it raises power up by extending militarization to the limits of outer space, across the surfaces of the earth, and to the depths of the oceans.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beginning in the 1970s, however, the techniques and organizational form of industrial production shifted toward smaller and more mobile labor units and more flexible structures of production, a shift often labeled as a move from Fordist to post-Fordist production.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“in general, the hegemony of immaterial labor tends to transform the organization of production from the linear relationships of assembly line to the innumerable and indeterminate relationships of distributed networks.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fleeing from a life of constant insecurity and forced mobility is good preparation for dealing with and resisting the typical forms of exploitation of immaterial labor.”
Antonio Negri (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No sudden inspiration can replace the long years of arduous labor necessary to train the eye to observe, the hand to reproduce.”
Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My idea is, that if capital and labor are left alone they will mutually regulate each other. People who think they can regulate all mankind and get wrong ideas which they believe to be panaceas for every ill cause much trouble to both employers and employees by their interference.”
Jay Gould (1836–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marx... Lenin... Mao Tse-Tung... These men were animated by the love of brother and this we must believe though their ends meant the seizure of power, and the building of mighty armies, the compulsion of concentration camps, the forced labor and torture and killing of tens of thousands, even millions.”
Dorothy Day (1897–1980) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Incompatibility of Love and Violence," Catholic Worker (May 1951)
“As a student and professional social worker, I was taking an active part in proposals to use... legislative authority... to correct social abuses—long hours, low wages, bad housing, child labor, and unsanitary conditions.”
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mothers don't want to bring their children [in for child labor at a vegetable cannery in Auborn, NY]—they need to. ...That need will never cease until employers pay decent wages! There ought to be a law assuring minimum pay, as well as one limiting hours worked!”
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gentlemen... let me make a plain statement. As I see it, the Labor Commission is duty-bound always to consider two things about every recommendation. One: what will this provide in the way of health, comfort, decency and security? Two: what will it cost?”
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Organized labor has always had one of its own people as Secretary and will expect to continue to have. I do not qualify.”
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Important though the general concepts and propositions may be with which the modern industrious passion for axiomatizing and generalizing has presented us, in algebra perhaps more than anywhere else, nevertheless I am convinced that the special problems in all their complexity constitute the stock and core of mathematics; and to master their difficulties requires on the whole the harder labor.”
Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Classical Groups (1939)
“Hyperbole! can you not rise In triumph from my memory, A modern magic spell devise As from an ironbound grammary: For I inaugurate through science The hymn of all hearts spiritual In the labor of my patience, Atlas, herbal, ritual.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prose" (1885).
“Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.”
Benjamin Tucker (1854–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.”
Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s a classic case of misplaced accounting priorities, valuing depreciable capital assets a thousand times more highly than the fruits of actual labor—but that’s the nature of the government organization.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.”
Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Founders’ Room," Unholy Loves (1979)
“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Ludlow (6 September 1824)
“[D]uring half a century, reactionary influences from Europe have been shifting American thinking onto a basis of socialistic assumptions. In cities and states, both parties began to socialize America with imitations of the Kaiser's Germany: social welfare laws, labor laws, wage-and-hour laws, citizens' pension laws, and so-called public ownership.”
Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mr. President, distinguished colleagues, having logged eighteen years of service in the legislature, two years of hard labor in the Cabinet, and helping out in the local government unit of Batangas for nearly nine years on a pro bono capacity, the one I am nominating, Mr. President, today has certainly paid his dues and has earned his right to be promoted for a podium position.”
Francis Escudero (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By lowering their expenditure on food, we would be awarding every family with an increase in disposable income, and mitigate labor demands for wage increases.”
Francis Escudero (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us be reminded that the poorest families belong to the agricultural sector. 40% of our labor force is directly dependent on agriculture. Another 20% are indirectly dependent.”
Francis Escudero (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We already spoke of lowering costs of food, labor, and transportation.”
Francis Escudero (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“PKK is a labor movement”
Abdullah Öcalan (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.”
Benedict of Nursia (480–547) said by 547 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.”
Robert Hayden (1913–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Those Winter Sundays (lines 1-5), from Collected Poems (1985)
“The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.”
Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It has been said that the modern world is divided between the hot and hasty pursuit of affairs in the hours of labor, and the no less eager chase of pleasure in the hours of leisure. But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why do they take the taxes and accept my manual labor for nine years? Why do they accept my taxes but cannot accept the fact that I have human rights?”
Elvira Arellano (born 1975) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tram Nguyen, "No Sanctuary: Elvira Arellano Deported Without Son," RaceWire: The Colorlines Blog (2007-08-20)
“The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When study becomes labor, we had better change the subject-matter as quickly as possible.”
Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rare individual who has learned to govern himself is too fed up with the labor of it to want to govern anybody else.”
Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the ten years I was president of the Teamsters, I had raised the membership from eight hundred thousand to more than 2 million and made it the largest single labor union the world.”
Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You almost had to live through it to really know the gut ripping misery of the depression during the early thirties which led to labor's bloodiest and most violent days.”
Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1850 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragment, Notes for a Law Lecture (1 July 1850), cited in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings, Vol. 2 (1894)
“Both the control of territory and the political domination of one state over another have profound consequences for international economic relations. However... market power or economic power has itself become a principal means by which states seek to organize and manipulate the international division of labor to their own advantage.”
Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.”
Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism cannot be reduced to one or a few features, but it does possess one relationship, central to its existence and operation, that constitutes the essence of inequality and ineradicable instability: the wage-labor-capital connection that dwells at the heart of the system.”
Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labor est etiam ipse voluptas.”
Marcus Manilius (100–50) said by 50 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War may achieve a redistribution of resources, but labor, not war, creates wealth.”
Kenneth Waltz (1924–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Answers determined by the social division of labor become truth as such.”
Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus.”
Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source