Work
Definition: Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a
purpose or result. Be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a result; do work.
Works: The plural form of the noun "work" and the third-person singular present tense form of the verb "to work."
Number of Quotes: 100
My work comes from the experience of crowds, injustice, and aggression ... I feel an affinity for art when it was made a
form of existence, like when shamans worked in the territory between men and unknown powers ... I try to bewitch the crowd.
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously.
Bella Abzug
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Dean Acheson
Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're
still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't
recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.
Douglas Adams
I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent
musician. He's not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Bob Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.
Douglas Adams
I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don't think they're doing art
but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is
knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.
Douglas Adams
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
Douglas Adams
Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don't quite work yet is
just not worth the effort for end users, however much fun it is for nerds like us.
Douglas Adams
We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked
out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often crash
when we tried to use them.
Douglas Adams
Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.
Douglas Adams
I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so
difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.
Henry Adams
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
John Adams
Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to work at your company.
Scott Adams
Executives can get away with having a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks like you're not working hard enough.
Scott Adams
The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.
Scott Adams
A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it. An amateur is a man who can't do his work when he does feel like it.
James Agate
A celebrity is one who works hard all his life to become well-known and then goes through back streets wearing dark glasses so he won't be recognized.
Fred Allen
A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 a.m. and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 p.m.
to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.
Fred Allen
Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it ... it knew at once and
sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you.
Kingsley Amis
You don't have to be mad to work here - but it helps.
Anonymous
I'm a believer in finding a passion, hard work and definitely not giving up on your dream.
La La Anthony
For workaholics, all the eggs of self-esteem are in the basket of work.
Judith M. Bardwick
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Robert Benchley
The rough broad difference between the American and the European business man is that
the latter is anxious to leave his work, while the former is anxious to get to it.
Arnold Bennett
Poor fellow, he suffers from files.
Aneurin Bevan
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
Edward de Bono
We spend most of our lives working. So why do so few people have a good time doing it?
Richard Branson
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Pearl S. Buck
A good manager is a man who isn't worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him. My
advice: Don't worry about yourself. Take care of those who work for you and you'll float to greatness on their achievements.
H. S. M. Burns
Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
Albert Camus
Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.
Thomas Carlyle
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
Winston Churchill
There will be times when you just can't seem to land an acting job, and you feel like
giving up. Don't! The only way to realise that dream is to keep working hard for it.
Sam Claflin
Women do two thirds of the world's work ... Yet they earn only one tenth of the world's income and
own less than one percent of the world's property. They are among the poorest of the world's poor.
Barber Conable
I make no secret of the fact that I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it. But you have to be efficient if you're going to be lazy.
Shirley Conran
Not a penny off the pay; not a minute on the day.
A. J. Cook
The only way to enjoy life is to work. Work is much more fun than fun.
Noël Coward
Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
William Cowper
There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
Quentin Crisp
In 1906, just as we were definitely giving up the old shed laboratory where we had been so happy, there came the dreadful catastrophe
which took my husband away from me and left me alone to bring up our children and, at the same time, to continue our work of research.
Marie Curie
A fair day's wage for a fair day's work.
Benjamin Disraeli
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends, and spirit -
and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But
the other four balls - family, health, friends, and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed,
marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
Brian Dyson
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Edison
No organizational action has more power for motivating employee behavior change than feedback from credible work associates.
Mark R. Edwards
After The Real Thing,
I thought about giving up acting because it's difficult to have a rich life outside your
work when you're an actress, a private life that can survive being picked up and put down. That's what I thought, anyway.
Jennifer Ehle
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus
z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein
The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work,
pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
Albert Einstein
One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours
a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat ... nor make love for eight hours.
William Faulkner
No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.
Mary Parker Follett
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work
seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second disastrous.
Margot Fonteyn
All that matters is love and work.
Sigmund Freud
The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
Robert Frost
If we want to preserve the foundation of our democracy, it's vital that we find common ground that allows us to work for the
greater good of this nation. This does not mean giving up our values. This does not mean swallowing a bitter compromise.
Tulsi Gabbard
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone
can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid
person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did
something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you
out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like maybe we should be just friends
turns into a glass splinter working its way into
your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
The Kindly Ones
Neil Gaiman
Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge
without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.
Mahatma Gandhi
It is practically impossible for a top management man, or even middle management, to be doing
the degree and level of work that he should be doing and, at the same time, have a clean desk.
Harold Geneen
You can know a person by the kind of desk he keeps ... If the president of a company has a
clean desk ... then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.
Harold Geneen
I think a man is a business failure who lets his family life interfere with his business record ... business is no place for him.
Jean Paul Getty
When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is duty, life is slavery.
Maxim Gorky
Everything is always impossible before it works. That is what entrepreneurs are all about - doing what people have told them is impossible.
R. Hunt Greene
You can increase your brain power three to fivefold simply by laughing and having fun before working on a problem.
Doug Hall
I don't think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more.
Katherine Hepburn
Tomorrow's typical career will be neither linear nor continuous, nor will it
always be upwards. Instead, one's life work will take more of a zig-zag course.
Tom Horton
In the not too distant future the notion of the annual pay increase must become as exceptional as it was novel a generation ago.
Geoffrey Howe
What's worked for me is not quitting and being passionate about what I do and not
giving up - and when I don't believe in myself, turning to others who believe in me.
Marc Jacobs
I was 25 when I'd told my parents that I was giving up steady work as an electrician to become an actor. They
couldn't have been less enthusiastic if I'd proposed starting a commercial newt-breeding operation in the bathroom.
David Jason
I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
Jerome K. Jerome
Life is hard, work is hard.
Liisa Joronen
Officials are highly educated but one-sided; in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a
single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him ... he won't understand a word of it.
Franz Kafka
The power of the position is giving way to the power of the person. A formal title and its placement on an organization
chart have less to do with career prospects and success ... than the skills and ideas a person brings to that work.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
We must create a kind of globalization that works for everyone... and not just for a few.
Néstor Kirchner
Life is a series of baby steps along the way and if you add up these tiny little steps you take toward your
goal, whatever it is, whether it's giving up something, a terrible addiction or trying to work your way through an
illness. When you total up those baby steps you'd be amazed over the course of 10 years, the strides you've taken.
Hoda Kotb
Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.
C. S. Lewis
I've found that when it came to doing something I loved and fighting for it, things
worked out. If you're going to kill yourself to develop something, you've got to enjoy it.
Jeanine Lobell
I don't know any executive who ever thought about stress, although a lot of other people do.
No one ever dies of hard work. But a lot of people die once they retire from an active job.
Ian MacGregor
For a woman to attain a high level in a male-dominated profession, she has to work twice as hard and/or be twice as smart.
Elizabeth Mackay
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. Mencken
I'm hungrier than all of them. They didn't put in the effort that I did to get the title. So I don't care
what it takes - I'm not giving up that title. I worked too hard to get it, and I'm not going to lose it.
Stipe Miocic
Certainly, my many years working in the comics industry, creating products that
I do not own, has made me rather fierce on the subject of giving up rights.
Alan Moore
The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit.
Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less competition.
Dwight Morrow
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
C. Northcote Parkinson
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is
incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
Anna Quindlen
The person who knows how
will always have a job. The person who knows why
will always be his boss.
Diane Ravitch
It's true hard work never killed anyone but I figure why take the chance?
Ronald Reagan
Happiness ... lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and
moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
There is no indispensable man.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I believe in hard work. It keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.
Helena Rubinstein
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter;
second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid, the second is pleasant and highly paid.
Bertrand Russell
It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production
without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.
E. F. Schumacher
Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a
noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies
will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should
be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
John Alexander Smith
A huge problem we face when we're in need is giving up our intuition and blindly following instruction.
Letting go works when we are following our hearts, but not so well when we are following a leader.
Tara Stiles
Working for a federal agency was like trying to dislodge a prune skin from the roof of
the mouth. More enterprise went into the job than could be justified by the results.
Caskie Stinnett
Whether it's choosing a career or deciding what charity to get involved with, the choice should come from your heart.
Ultimately, you are the one who has to get up every morning and enjoy what you are doing, so make sure it matters to you.
Dave Thomas
The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.
Leo Tolstoy
Work keeps us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty.
Voltaire
Never burn bridges. Today's junior prick, tomorrow's senior partner.
Sigourney Weaver
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
E. O. Wilson
The most successful people are those who take pride in their work, pride in their family ... It is
great to attain wealth, but money is really just one way - and hardly the best way - to keep score.
Kemmons Wilson
When you retire ... you go from who's who to who's that, like stepping off the pier (or) achieving statutory senility.
Walter Wriston
Last on Earth
