Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave? Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave? Joe Hill
If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. Joseph Ettor, IWW organizer
The laboring man ... ought to remember that all who labor are their brothers, and that all women who labor are their sisters, and whenever one class of workingmen or workingwomen is oppressed all other laborers ought to stand by the oppressed class. Robert Ingersoll, essay 1890, ‘Eight Hours Must Come’
The people are weary of being oppressed, persecuted, exploited to the maximum. They are weary of the wretched selling of their labor-power day after day – faced with the fear of joining the enormous mass of unemployed – so that the greatest profit can be wrung from each human body, profit later squandered in the orgies of the masters of capital. Che Guevara
Is this the end of civilisation? ... The sixth killer App: Protestantism and the work ethic. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: Is the West History? VI Work, Channel 4 2011
This work ethic, [Max] Weber argued, was the key to capitalism. ibid.
Europeans these days work a whole lot less than their American counterparts. And they don’t just work less, they pray less. ibid.
Could it be that European Protestantism was killed by greed? ibid.
To the East a Godless Europe; to the West a God-fearing America. ibid.
Springfield ... Some five hundred places of worship. ibid.
Hong Kong created a quasi-Christian society of God-worshippers, that attracted the support of tens of millions of Chinese. ibid.
China’s experiment with Christianity had been a catastrophe ... Churches were closed down. Some were turned into factories. ibid.
The Protestant work ethic has come to China. ibid.
Our civilisation being what it is, you’ve got to spent eight hours out of every twenty-four as a mixture between an imbecile and a sewing machine. It’s very disagreeable, I know. It’s humiliating and disgusting. But there you are. You’ve got to do it, otherwise the whole fabric of our world will fall to bits and we’ll starve. Do the job then, idiotically and mechanically; and spend your leisure hours in being a real complete man or woman. Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point
I want nothing but to work. Lust for Life 1956 starring Kirk Douglas & Anthony Quinn & James Donald & Pamela Brown & Everett Sloane & Niall MacGinnis & Noel Purcell & Henry Daniell & Madge Kennedy & Jill Bennett & Jeanette Sterke & Lionel Jeffries & Laurence Naismith et al, director Vincente Minnelli, Vincent to Theo
Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace. Hesiod
To suffer fifty weeks of a year for the sake of a two week vacation. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman 2006 starring Xavarian Dramatic Society, Warren Able Theatre starring Daniel Valez & Amanda Magnavita & Michael Longo & Michael Maldonado et al, Happy to Biff
I don’t know what the hell I’m working for. ibid.
Never leave a job till you’re finished. ibid. Willy
I do love to work, you know, lad. I’m a bloody grafter. The Royle Family at Christmas, Jim, BBC 2000
Work hard for what you want because it won’t come to you without a fight. You have to be strong and courageous and know that you can do anything you put your mind to. If somebody puts you down or criticizes you, just keep on believing in yourself and turn it into something positive. Leah LaBelle
People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society. Vince Lombardi
We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest. Voltaire
The harder you work, the luckier you get. Gary Player
Some of you seem to have got off on the wrong foot with me. You didn’t like some of the jokes I told earlier. You’ve got to chill out, yeah. Trust me, this is what I do. All right? You will never work in a place like this again. This is brilliant. Fact. Yeah? And you’ll never have another boss like me, someone who’s basically a chilled-out entertainer. The Office UK: Merger s2e1, Brent to new Swindon intake, BBC 2002
We’re actually used to doing stuff like working hard, being motivated. The Office: Appraisals s2e2, Swindon lady
Now, guys, we’re about to enter a warehouse environment, now I must warn you that some of the people in here will be working class, so there may be arse cleavage. So just find a partner, hold hands. Don’t talk to anyone though. The Office: Party s2e3, Tim
Women who work in factories are slappers. ibid. Gareth
The people you work with are people you were just thrown together with. I mean, you don’t know them, it wasn’t your choice. And yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or your family. But probably all you have in common is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day. And so, when you find someone you have a connection with. And, yeah, Dawn was a ray of sunshine in my life. The Office UK, Christmas Special II, Tim, BBC 2003
I honestly don’t know how you can work with that jackass, and that other jackass and that new jackass. The Office US s5e18: Blood Drive, Bob Vance to Jim & Pam, with Phyllis, NBC 2009
If I can’t scuba, then what’s this all been about? What am I working toward? The Office US s6e1: Gossip, Creed
Let’s go do some work. The Office US s6e10: Murder, Jim
Today is the hardest I have worked in a long long time. ibid. Michael
Work is the call. Work at war speed. Goodnight – and go for it. Herbert Morrison, broadcast 22nd May 1940
Never forget, people DIED for the eight hour workday. Rebecca Gordon
There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group because there is less competition there. Indira Gandhi
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that Fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun. Thomas Carlyle
Japan is a nation of masks. Learning to live behind a mask is a prerequisite of much of Japanese civilisation ... Behind perhaps the most impenetrable mask of all the subtle yet forceful way the Japanese establishment is today reclaiming a nationalism denied them since the Second World War. John Pilger, Japan: Behind the Mask, ITV 1987
Under the American occupation of General Douglas MacArthur a new constitution was formulated which gave the defeated Japanese new freedoms. But who today are the beneficiaries of these new freedoms? The ordinary people of Japan who had suffered so terribly, or the great reborn companies like Mitsubishi which had formed the industrial and financial base of the war? ... In 1946 General MacArthur cancelled the right of public workers to strike ... The legacy of MacArthur’s ban was the weakening of real trade-union opposition in Japan, thus today the outside world sees only the mask of a docile workforce and a consensus society. ibid.
Women who work for less than £2 an hour, six days a week, no sick pay, no pension, and three days holiday a year if they are lucky: 40% of Japan’s labour force are women, who receive less than half the pay and none of the fringe benefits of the men. ibid.
Today the face of Japan is strong and confident, but the cracks reveal that many working people are quite unlike the happy stereotypes, and living conditions are poor compared to the nation’s wealth, and the young are trapped in a moulding process which too often leads to tragedy. ibid.
You don’t have to go to college to be a success ... We need the people who run the offices, the people who do the hard physical work of our society. George H W Bush