Importance of Work Quotes

Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

I just take this job very seriously. It's almost like you play a kid's game for a king's ransom. And if you don't take it serious enough, eventually, one day, you're going to say, 'Oh, I could have done this, I could have done that.'

I'm drawn as well to the lower echelons of things because it struck me a long time ago that it didn't really matter on what level people were working on anything; it was just as important to them as the people working on what's perceived as a higher level.

Why, man of idleness, labor has rocked you in the cradle, and nourished your pampered life; without it, the woven silk and the wool upon your bank would be in the shepherd's fold. For the meanest thing that ministers to human want, save the air of heaven, man is indebted to toil; and even the air, in God's wise ordination, is breathed with labor.

If what you're working for really matters, you'll give it all you've got.

The question I ask myself like almost every day is: ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?' Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time. And that’s what this company is.

The dignity is in the worker, not in the job.

My mother and father have always drilled in to me that work is very important.

Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable.

I've never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live. [...] There's something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy.

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.

When I was a kid I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit.

Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.

I really, sincerely believe that one should trust the work, and not the author.

It's the work that's important, not the individual who does it.