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“The working class must be emancipated by the working class. Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class. Child labor must be abolished by the working class. Society must be reconstructed by the working class. The working class must be employed by the working class. The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class. War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.”
Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) said by 1926 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The capitalist mode acts to accumulate capital through the hiring of labor power, but is marked by the cyclical alternation of labor mobilization and labor displacement; each intake of labor power uproots some prior adaptation, while each sloughing off of labor power creates a new cohort of the unemployed.”
Eric Wolf (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since the labor-power could be the labor of four, eight, or even twelve hours, the amount of labor expended can be augmented. The value of the labor-power is decided by the consumption goods necessary to maintain the life of the worker, making it possible for that person to exist as a human being who expends the same labor today as yesterday.”
Itsurō Sakisaka (1897–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The essence of capital is its ability to mobilize social labor by buying labor power and setting it to work. This requires a market in which the capacity of human beings to work can be bought and sold like any other commodity: buyers of labor power offer wages, which sellers accept in return for a commodity, their own labor.”
Eric Wolf (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF AN EPIC CHANGE in the nature of work. The First Industrial Revolution ended slave and serf labor. The Second Industrial Revolution dramatically shrank agricultural and craft labor. The Third Industrial Revolution is sunsetting mass wage labor in the manufacturing and service industries and salaried professional labor in large parts of the knowledge sector.”
Jeremy Rifkin (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he labourers have a right to subsistence out of the land, in all cases of inability to labour; that all those who are able to labour have a right to subsistence out of the land, in exchange for their labour; and that, if the holders of the land will not give them subsistence, in exchange for their labour, they have a right to the land itself.”
William Cobbett (1763–1835) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Legacy to Labourers: Or, What is the Right which the Lords, Baronets, and Squires, Have to the Lands of England? (1835), p. 140
“The product of labour is labour which has been congealed in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labour. Labour's realization is its objectification.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These [traits] are first: love, love for his people, love for the working masses...Second, honesty...Third, courage...Fourth, comradely solidarity...Fifth, love for labor. Not only love but an honest attitude to labor, firmly bearing in mind that if a man lives, eats and does not work, this means that he eats someone else's labor.”
Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.”
John L. Lewis (1880–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are a workers’ party because we see in the coming battle between finance and labor the beginning and the end of the structure of the twentieth century. We are on the side of labor and against finance. . . The value of labor under socialism will be determined by its value to the state, to the whole community. Labor means creating value, not haggling over things.”
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We a Workers’ Party?” written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932)
“Fellow workers and peasants, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the working people, with the working people, and for the working people. And for this revolution of the working people, by the working people, and for the working people we are prepared to give our lives.”
Fidel Castro (1926–2016) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On 16 April 1961, in a funeral oration in Vedado for victims of the air raids the day before, Fidel Castro referring to the January 1959 Cuban Revolution. Quoted in José Ramón Fernández. 2001. Playa Giron/Bay of Pigs: W…
“[On Jeremy Corbyn's then Labour leadership] I work every single day, in some small way, to try to move forward the end of his tenure in office. I work every day — an email, a phone call, a meeting with Labour MPs. I try and galvanise them. Every day I do something to rescue the Labour Party from his leadership.”
Peter Mandelson (born 1953) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As cited in "Lord Mandelson says he is working daily to bring down Jeremy Corbyn", The Jewish Chronicle (20 February 2017).
“The economic fundamental is labour. Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's labour that makes the harvest what it is. That is the economic fundamental: every one of us is working with material which we did not and could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature.”
Henry Ford (1863–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On this whole subject of labor, the corner-stone of my creed is laid deep. I hold that no society is well or safely organized, whatever its apparent strength, which does not rest on a sound organization of labor; and that cannot be when the working-man is by any contrivance defrauded of his wages — that is, of his just share of the profits of his own labor.”
Eugene Casserly (1820–1883) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Celebration at Tammany Hall (1870)
“An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.”
Adam Smith (1723–1790) said by 1790 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bolton (14 November 1922), quoted in John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–1931 (1977), p. 35
“...let us sell our labour for what it is worth. And if an industry cannot buy our labour, let that industry die. But let us not sell our labour cheap to keep an industry alive.”
Alan Paton (1903–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“1982 is the year when we want to see a lot of left-wing Labour-controlled authorities. The people that have been selected now as candidates tend to be politically experienced in community politics or the Labour movement. In no way are they people coming off the streets and becoming Labour councillors, which is what has happened in the past.”
Jeremy Corbyn (born 1949) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Times (12 March 1982), p. 3.
“For others, the violence and harassment because of conservative stereotypes, is seen as a reality that has to be tolerated as part of life.I am therefore pleased that the International Labour Organisation is working on an international labour standard on ending violence and harassment at work”
Janat Mukwaya (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are actively working with the world’s development partners and other stakeholders to bridge skills gaps and promote employability, particularly among young Nigerians. As part of our commitment to modernise labour administration, the ministry is advancing labour law reforms to ensure that Nigeria’s legal framework responds effectively to the challenges of the changing world of work.”
Mohammed Maigari Dingyadi (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor—that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To the Working People," Complete Works, trans. Leo Wiener, Vol 24, p. 129 (1905)
“I was never proud of anything. I just did it like everything else. To do a film - let me explain to you - it's like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that.”
Luise Rainer (1910–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus knows that we had rather labor than suffer; and that we would rather labor.and suffer, too, than be laid aside. No man is fit to rise up and labor, until he is made willing to lie still and suffer as long as his Master pleases.”
Edward Payson (1783–1827) said by 1827 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The product of mental labor — science — always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Addenda, "Relative and Absolute Surplus Value" in Economic Manuscripts (1861-63)
“Capital is dead labor, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.”
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.”
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Vita Activa", p. 158. First published in The New Yorker (18 October 1958)
“Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.”
Robert Nozick (1938–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.”
Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Would you leave me free to do what I think is best for the Labor Department, Franklin? I'd try to keep you informed, but I wouldn't always be able to... [D]irect unemployment relief, a program of public works, minimum wage and hour laws, unemployment and old age insurance, abolition of child labor... These things need doing no matter who is Secretary of Labor.”
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Labor is like any other commodity in the market — increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...as I worked with the unionized labor, of the much larger labor force that was outside the purview of the protective labor laws, of any form of social security, access to justice, access to financial services, anything. That tugged at my heart. And those people were unorganized and had no strength to act to seek remedies.”
Ela Bhatt (1933–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't we hear nowadays objections on the part of the labor unions to importing goods from China, which are made with slave labor? Is the existence of slave labor not a reflection upon the idea of a free commercial society?”
Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The former President of India, has made outstanding contributions towards designing and evolving labor policy in India. He was a champion of labor movement and a person who was largely responsible for ensuring that labor and employment issues figured prominently in all policy discussions relating to growth and development.”
Mallikarjun Kharge (born 1942) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mallikarjun Kharge in: Shri Mallikarjun Kharge Minister of Labour and Employment conferred the V.V. Giri Memorial Award 2009 on Prof. Ravi Srivastava of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Press Information Bureau, 10 Augu…
“I suppose I don't have to work but I do love working. I class myself as a working-class girl and I've never stopped working. When I'm offered shows here, there and the other, I do an awful lot because I feel other people would love to be offered what I'm offered, who am I to say no? I'm definitely working class and I always will be.”
Bonnie Tyler (1951–2026) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bonnie Tyler: 'I'm not part of the 80s, I'm part of now'" by Emine Saner in The Guardian (13 May 2013)
“[The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves...”
Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gompers, Samuel. Proceedings of the Convention. Washington, D.C.: American Federation of Labor, 1923, p. 37.
“women’s struggles are labor politics, but they’re unwaged labor politics. And they’re not less important or more important but integral to the entire picture. There is waged work in the society, and there is unwaged work in the society, and they’re both absolutely crucial to the accumulation of capital and to its destruction.”
Selma James (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am proud to be a GMB member and a former officer. I strive to ensure that my contributions continue to aid the historic constructive working relations between the Labour party and the trade union movement. The Warwick agreement, which was referred to in our manifesto, is another historic agreement which only the Labour party could achieve.”
Dawn Butler (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man's legal rights are everywhere in collision with man's natural rights; hence the deep-rooted and wide-spread unrest of modern civilization. The only sacred right of property is the natural right of the working man to the product, which is the creation of his labor. The legal right of the capitalist to rent and interest and profit is the absolute denial of the natural right of labor.”
Albert Parsons (1848–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“if you see a child with autistic-like behaviors at age two and three, the worst thing you can do is just let them sit and watch TV all day. That's just the worst thing you can do. You need to have a teacher working with that child, working on teaching language, working on social interaction, working on getting them interested in different things, and keeping their brain connected to the world.”
Temple Grandin (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a common myth that idlers are incapable of working. The term “idler” is used as a pejorative by the forces of dullness and authority as they like the idea that idleness equates to evil, and they want society at large to despise the idler. The non-idler cannot understand the paradox of the working idler. He likes things to be simple: you are either working, or not working.”
Tom Hodgkinson (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There has always been a left, an extreme left, in the Labour Party. ... there is now more of an attempt, patchy, but an attempt by extremist organizations to infiltrate and work through the Labour Party at the present time—the phrase is 'entryism'. It is something which is certainly there and which one certainly has to beware of.”
Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with The Times (5 January 1977), p. 8
“It is very conceivable, that the labor of man alone laid out upon a work, requiring great skill and art to bring it to perfection, may be more productive, in value, than the labour of nature and man combined, when directed towards more simple operations and objects”
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have much more power when you are working for the right thing than when you are working against the wrong thing. And, of course, if the right thing is established wrong things will fade away of their own accord. Grass-roots peace work is vitally important. All who work for peace belong to a special peace fellowship — whether we work together or apart.”
Peace Pilgrim (1908–1981) said by 1981 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a sense, in the area of child care, children's relationships with parents' working has come full circle. We have gone from the mom-and-pop store (or mom-and-pop farm), with its integration of child care and work, to children-at-home and dad-at-work; to the mom-plus-daddy working at home, with its integration of childcare and work again. From mom-and-pop back to mom-and-pop.”
Warren Farrell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week, that’s probably OK. If you free up human labor, you can help elder people better, have smaller class sizes – you know, the demand for labor to do good things is still there. And then if you ever get beyond that, you have a lot of leisure time and you’ll have to figure out what to do with it.”
Bill Gates (born 1955) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bill Gates teases the possibility of a 3-day work week where ‘machines can make all the food and stuff’ (November 23, 2023)
“At the core of capitalism there is not only the symbiotic relation between waged-contractual labor and enslavement but, together with it, the dialectics of accumulation and destruction of labor-power, for which women have paid the highest cost, with their bodies, their work, their lives.”
Silvia Federici (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source