Labor Quotes - page 15
People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor. The fulfillment of humankind as human beings lies, then, in the fulfillment of the world. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure, and permanently threatened--if their work does not belong to them--the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization.
Paulo Freire
Can it be out of the kindness of my heart that I carry out such a labor of mercy on a people who once captured me when they wrecked my father's house and carried off his servants? For by descent I was a freeman, born of a decurion father; yet I have sold this nobility of mine, I am not ashamed, nor do I regret that it might have meant some advantage to others. In short, I am a slave in Christ to this faraway people for the indescribable glory of "everlasting life which is in Jesus Christ our Lord."
Saint Patrick
I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.
Gore Vidal
The major difference between the left and the right when it comes to any movement dedicated to overthrowing the free-market order-corporatist, authoritarian, etc.-is which groups will be the winners and which groups will be the losers. A left-wing system might empower labor leaders, government bureaucrats, progressive intellectuals, universities, certain minority groups, and one set of industries. A right-wing system might reward a different set of industries as well as traditional religious groups and their leaders, an ethnic majority, aristocrats, or perhaps rural interests. But both systems would be reactionary in the sense that they rejected the legacy of the Lockean revolution...
Jonah Goldberg
One of the great things about liberalism is that it allows for more paths for just that pursuit. In tribal society, there was little to no division of labor beyond what was rooted in age and sex. In feudal monarchies and modern totalitarianisms alike, there is division of labor, but it is imposed on people by rulers: "You will be a soldier.” "You will be a fry cook.” "You were born to be a slave or a serf.” In a free society, you have choice. It's not perfect: You can't choose to be a Marine if you do not meet the requirements, but you are free to try.
Jonah Goldberg
Consider one of the standard "laments" or "stories of wonder" in conventional tales of natural history: the mayfly that lives but a single day (a sadness even recorded in the technical name for this biological group - Ephemoptera). Yes, the adult fly may enjoy only a moment in the sun, but we should honor the entire life cycle and recognize that the larvae, or juvenile stages, live and develop for months. Larvae are not mere preparations for a brief adulthood. We might better read the entire life cycle as a division of labor, with larvae as feeding and growing stages, and the adult as a short-lived reproductive machine. In this sense, we could well view the adult fly's day as the larva's clever and transient device for making a new generation of truly fundamental feeders.
Stephen Jay Gould
Western field-work conjures up images of struggle on horseback [...]-toughing it out on one canteen a day as you labor up and down mountains. The value of a site is supposedly correlated with the difficulty of getting there. This, of course, is romantic drivel. Ease of access is no measure of importance. The famous La Brea tar pits are right in downtown Los Angeles. To reach the Clarkia lake beds, you turn off the main road at Buzzard's Roost Trophy Company and drive the remaining fifty yards right up to the site.
Stephen Jay Gould
Think you to be a philosopher while acting as you do? think you to go on thus eating, thus drinking, giving way in like manner to [your own] wrath and to displeasure? Nay you must watch, you must labor; overcome certain desires; quit your familiar friends, submit to be despised by your slave, to be held in derision by them that meet you, to take the lower place in all things, in office, in positions of authority, in courts of law. Weight these things fully, and then, if you will, lay to your hand; if as the price of these things you would gain Freedom, Tranquility, and passionless Serenity.
Epictetus
Well, Al Gore invented the Internet and he won a Nobel Peace Prize. He didn't have any help with his science, right? In other words, he had two other scientists with him. He took the Nobel Peace Prize. He didn't share it with the guys who probably were the brains. He's a big fat elitist pig. He's a limousine liberal. In fact, An Inconvenient Truth is garbage. It's bullsh*t. No kid, nobody who's going to change the world is going to look at that thing, yet he got a Nobel Peace Prize because he's on the inside. He's part of the elite. He's part of the conspiracy of the corporate, the bureaucratic and the labor elite. And look at him. He looks like a big puffed out piece of pompous shit.
Lloyd Kaufman
You will do away with the military frontiers, and those economic and commercial barriers which are still worse. Protection introduces violence into the expansion of labor; like militarism, it brings in a fatal absence of balance. You will suppress that which justifies among nations the things which among individuals we call murder, robbery, and unfair competition. You will suppress battles - not nearly so much by the direct measure of supervision and order that you will take as because you will suppress the causes of battle. You will suppress them chiefly because it is you who will do it, by yourself, everywhere, with your invincible strength and the lucid conscience that is free from selfish motives. You will not make war on yourself.
Henri Barbusse
I was never proud of anything. I just did it like everything else. To do a film - let me explain to you - it's like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that.
Luise Rainer
I conclude by listing several main points of this essay:
1. Human capital is of great importance in the modern economy.
2. Human capital has become of much greater significance during the past two decades.
3. Human capital is crucial to the international division of labor.
4. Much unmeasured learning goes on in companies and by adults.
5. People need to invest in themselves during their whole lives.
6. Distance learning will become of crucial importance to the teaching and learning process.
7. Human capital stimulates technological innovations and the high-tech sector.
Gary Becker
