Merle Haggard Quotes

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Best Western manager to give me a job. I have cleaned homes.

I'd never put all my chips anywhere, because I don't want to close any doors, but I was raised in a very blue-collar family. I was raised by parents who said, 'If you don't go to work every day, you're not contributing', so that's my mentality. I have to work every day; I have to bring home a paycheck.

We want work and we want honest jobs. Our minds and our hands will be our keep!

I'm working class. Not because my family have always been skint or because I'm from the grim north, but because I am from a class of people who believe in work. In paying their way.

I come from a blue-collar family, and I'm just glad for the work.

I come from a simple background, so I couldn't call my father and say, 'Come pay my bills,' so I had to get out there and work.

I don't get handed money - and I never will. I have to work!

Having parents who were hard working, blue collar, and staunchly independent, neither political party's positioning really impressed me.

I come from a pretty working-class neighborhood in Chicago. Hard work was just expected of you. It wasn't some noble thing you did; it was a prerequisite. It's what a man did. You get up, you put on your boots, and you work hard. We've lost a lot of that, I'm afraid.

You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.

I never took a grant or borrowed a penny from anybody. It was partially because I didn't really know how to do that, but secondly, my pride never would have allowed me to. In the beginning it was about doing it the right way, on the merits of the music.

Every thoughtful and kind-hearted person must regard with interest any device or plan which promises to enable at least the more intelligent, enterprising, and determined part of those who are not capitalists to cease to labor for hire.

Too many Mainers are dependent on government handouts. Government dependency has not - and never will - create prosperity.

We have broken the cycle of dependency. People have found out they're better off working.

I come from a very working-class background.

We're working people, and that's what we like to do, work.

I was raised to want to work for a living. The idea of just sitting around or going shopping every day appalls me.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its debt in the penitentiary or the poor house.

I think people who don't work don't really have interesting and meaningful lives. More than anything, it hurts them. When you're born rich, people just associate you with what you've been given, but the truth is every individual feels better when you create something on your own. Everyone takes pride in the work they do.

I class myself as a manual laborer.

No one capable of maintaining himself by art or labour pretend to be poor and beg his food on pain of imprisonment.

Jobs not welfare.

Last year in the United States alone over $98 billion was distributed in unearned government transfer payments and other aid to millions of men and women who most often did nothing for what they received. This character-weakening government dole is repeated in almost every nation of the world. We encourage Latter-day Saints everywhere to remain free of government assistance. Work for what you receive.

I am entirely in accord with the idea that it is hardly worthwhile to try to give a better way of life to those who will not work and help themselves, but there are many, many people who work hard and for one reason or another have very little return for their labor.