William Morris Quotes

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It's fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.

Work is not the curse, but drudgery is.

The 35-hour week has from the moment of its inception been a massive mistake. We need to return to people the joy of work.

We say, pay talent well and genius generously, but pay well also the arm that toils; pay the needle, the saw, the spade, the hoe, the mop.

Eight hours daily labor is enough for any human being

We must never forget the value of work because without it people are denied a sense of dignity and of community.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Good and productive labor is valuable, and it doesn't mean you have to have a fancy job description. You don't have to become rich. You can be ordinary. Happiness lies there. Do good work, create good work for others.

There are lots of jobs in search of talent. And there's lots of talent in search of meaningful work.

The physical lot of … workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality...

He who builds a factory builds a temple; he who works there worships there.

The great question will forever remain, who shall work?

The priority of work over capital places an obligation in justice upon employers to consider the welfare of the workers before the increase of profits.

The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.

There can be no distress, there can be no hard times, when labor is well paid. The man who raises his hand against the progress of the workingman raises his hand against prosperity.

All people shall have the right and the obligation to work.

Constant labor of one uniform kind destroys the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.

If workmen become scarce, the manufacturer gives higher wages, but at first requires an encrease of labour; and this is willingly submitted to by the artisan, who can now eat and drink better, to compensate his additional toil and fatigue.

The global economy should not be supported by wage earners. They have to be able to build a future like any other human being.

Nobody works harder than American workers. We are the hardest working people in the world.

Genuine wealth is created when work is undertaken not simply as a means of earning a livelihood but also as a way to contribute to society. We hold that meaningful work is a basic need of the human soul, as important to the proper development of the individual as nutritious food, clean water and fresh air are to the physical body.

Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.

Labor: a man coins himself into his labor,—turns his day, his strength, his thought, his affection into some product which remains as the visible sign of his power; and to protect that, to secure that to him, to secure his past self to his future self, is the object of all government. There is no interest in any country so imperative as that of labor; it covers all, and constitutions and governments exist for that,—to protect and insure it to the laborer.

There are no employees without employers.