Workmen Quotes

The majority of any society comprised, Smith knew, not landlords or merchants, but "servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds," who derived their income from wages. Their welfare was the prime concern of economic policy, as Smith conceived it. "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable," he wrote. "It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged." The chief economic concern of the legislator, in Smith's view, ought to be the purchasing power of wages, since that was the measure of the material well-being of the bulk of the population. (p. 64) ~ Jerry Z. Muller

It was many years ago that I got out of a crewtruck in the national forest and ran toward a large glowing object hovering in the darkening Arizona sky. But when I made that fateful choice to leavethe truck, I was leaving behind more than just my six fellow workmen. I was leaving behind forever all semblance of a normal life, running headlong toward an experience so overwhelmingly mind-rending in its effects, so devastating in itsaftermath, that my life would never - could never - be the same again. ~ Travis Walton

Every wise workman takes his tools away from the work from time to time that they may be ground and sharpened; so does the only-wise Jehovah take his ministers oftentimes away into darkness and loneliness and trouble, that he may sharpen and prepare them for harder work in his service. ~ Robert Murray M'Cheyne

Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are. ~ Henry David Thoreau

[In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay. ~ John Desmond Bernal

Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian. ~ Robert E. Howard

One might go to the bakery, perhaps," he said. "But did you know the baker has tuberculosis? All the people here run around in a highly infectious state. The baker's daughter has tuberculosis too, it seems to have something to do with the runoff from the cellulose factory, with the steam that the locomotives have spewed out for decades, with the bad diet that people eat. Almost all of them have cankered lung lobes, pneumothorax and pneumoperitoneum are endemic. They have tuberculosis of the lungs, the head, the arms and legs. All of them have tubercular abscesses somewhere on their bodies. The valley is notorious for tuberculosis. You will find every form of it here: skin tuberculosis, brain tuberculosis, intestinal tuberculosis. Many cases of meningitis, which is deadly within hours. The workmen have tuberculosis from the dirt they dig around in, the farmers have it from their dogs and the infected milk. The majority of the people have galloping consumption. Moreover," he said, "the effect of the new drugs, of streptomycin for example, is nil. Did you know the knacker has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That her daughters have been to sanatoria on three occasions? Tuberculosis is by no means on the way out. People claim it is curable. but that's what the pharmaceutical industry says. In fact, tuberculosis is as incurable as it always was. Even people who have been inoculated against it come down with it. Often those who h ~ Thomas Bernhard

The labourer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labour, either by working a greater number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class. ~ Karl Marx

The disorganisers are those who want to level everything: property, comforts, the price of commodities, the various services rendered to the State ... who want the workmen in the camp to receive the salary of the legislator ... who want to level even talents, knowledge, the virtues, because they themselves have none of these things. ~ Jacques Pierre Brissot

So, from generation to generation, the spiritual church is rising upwards toward its perfection; and, though one after another the workmen pass away, the fabric remains, and the great Master-builder carries on the undertaking. Be it ours to build in our portion in a solid and substantial manner, so that they who come after us may be at once thankful for our thoroughness, and inspired by our example. ~ William Mackergo Taylor

Ina regular and constant employment the greatest result will always be gained by such a rate as allows a workman each day,or each week at the most, to recover all fatigue and recommence with an undiminished store of energy. ~ William Stanley Jevons

It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled. ~ John Ruskin

Social security was the most emotional issue that session. Republicans protested that if the administration bill were passed, children would no longer support their parents, the payroll tax would discourage workmen so much that they would quit their jobs, and that, taken all in all, the measure would remove the romance of life. ~ William Manchester

Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of Providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God; hence I infer that losses, disappointments, ill tongues, loss of friends, houses or country, are God's workmen, set on work to work out good to you, out of everything that befalleth you. ~ Samuel Rutherford

No man, however benevolent, liberal, and wise, can use a large fortune so that it will do half as much good in the world as it would if it were divided into moderate sums and in the hands of workmen who had earned it by industry and frugality. The piling up of estates often does great and conspicuous good ... But no man does with accumulated wealth so much good as the same amount would do in many hands. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

The sawdust flew. A slightly sweet fragrance floated in the immediate area. It was a sweet but subtle aroma, neither the scent of pine nor willow, but one from the past that had been forgotten, only to reappear now after all these years, fresher than ever. The workmen occasionally scooped up a handful of sawdust, which they put into their mouths and swallowed. Before that they had chewed on pieces of green bark that they had stripped from the cut wood. It had the same fragrance and it freshened their mouths, so at first that was what they had used. Now even though they were no longer chewing the bark with which they felt such a bond, the stack of corded wood was a very appealing sight. From time to time they gave the logs a friendly slap or kick. Each time they sawed off a section, which rolled to the ground from the sawhorse, they would say:

'Off with you - go over there and lie down where you belong.'

What they were thinking was that big pieces of lumber like this should be used to make tables or chairs or to repair a house or make window frames; wood like this was hard to find.

But now they were cutting it into kindling to be burned in stoves, a sad ending for good wood like this. They could see a comparison with their own lives, and this was a saddening thought. ("North China") ~ Xiao Hong

A workman who wants to do his work well must first prepare his tools. ~ Confucius

The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. ~ Antonin Artaud

God buries His workmen but carries on His work. ~ Charles Wesley

Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it in riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots? ~ Erik Larson

I was there when the first dreams came off the assembly line. I was there when the corrupted visions that had congealed in the vats were pincered up and hosed off and carried down the line to be dropped onto the rolling belts. I was there when the first workmen dropped their faceplates and turned on their welding torches. I was there when they began welding the foul things into their armor, when they began soldering the antennae, bolting on the wheels, pouring in the eye-socket jelly. I was there when they turned the juice on them and I was there when the things began to twitch. ~ Harlan Ellison

Faith is a kind of winged intellect. The great workmen of history have been men who believed like giants. ~ Charles Henry Parkhurst

Must necessarily be small; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse ~ Adam Smith

A bad workman quarrels with his tools. ~ George Herbert

On a small square, wood is being cut for the city school. Cords of healthy, crisp timber are piled high and melt slowly, one log after another, under the saws and axes of workmen. Ah, timber, trustworthy, honest, true matter of reality, bright and completely decent, the embodiment of the decency and prose of life! However deep you look into its core, you cannot find anything that is not apparent on its evenly smiling surface, shining with that warm, assured glow of its fibrous pulp woven in a likeness of the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face og the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face appears, always smiling and golden. Oh, the strange complexion of timber, warm eithout exaltation, completely sound, fragrant, and pleasant! ~ Bruno Schulz

You've been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General - just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns - 'fess up! With your great experience, don't you honest, cross-your-heart, think that perhaps - just maybe - when a country has gone money-mad, like all our labor unions and workmen, with their propaganda to hoist income taxes, so that the thrifty and industrious have to pay for the shiftless ne'er-do-weels, then maybe, to save their lazy souls and get some iron into them, a war might be a good thing? Come on, now, tell your real middle name, Mong General! ~ Sinclair Lewis

In this country, where workmen move about frequently and with facility, the unions suffer in their harmony and stability. It ~ William Graham Sumner

An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything. ~ Will Durant

The bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good. ~ John Stuart Mill

After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman
by whom I do not mean just now the rich
have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people. ~ Charles Kingsley

Man does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth ~ Andrew Carnegie

Till the master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew. ~ Rudyard Kipling

In another building, I was shown his [Mr Brunel's] manufactory of shoes, which, like the other, is full of ingenuity, and, in regard to subdivision of labour, brings this fabric on a level with the oft-admired manufactory of pins. Every step in it is effected by the most elegant and precise machinery; while as each operation is performed by one hand, so each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, who complete from the hide, as supplied by the currier, a hundred pair of strong and well-finished shoes per day. All the details are performed by ingenious applications of the mechanic powers, and all the parts are characterized by precision, uniformity, and accuracy. As each man performs but one step in the process, which implies no knowledge of what is done by those who go before or follow him, so the persons employed are not shoemakers, but wounded soldiers, who are able to learn their respective duties in a few hours. The contract at which these shoes are delivered to government is 6s. 6d. per pair, being at least 2s. less than what was paid previously for an unequal and cobbled article.

While, however, we admire these triumphs of mechanics, and congratulate society on the prospect of enjoying more luxuries at less cost of human labour, it ought not to be forgotten, that the general good in such cases is productive of great partial evils, against which a paternal government ought to provide. No race of workmen being proverbially more industrious than shoemakers, it is ~ Richard Phillips

As I prepare to leave she walks with me, half deaf and blind, under several ladders in her living room that balance paint and workmen, into the garden where there is a wild horse, a 1930 car splayed flat on its axles and hundreds of flowering bushes so that her eyes swim out into the dark green and unfocussed purple. There is very little now that separates the house from the garden. Rain and vines and chickens move into the building. Before I leave, she points to a group photograph of a fancy dress party that shows herself and my grandmother Lalla among the crowd. She has looked at it for years and has in this way memorized everyone's place in the picture. She reels off names and laughs at the facial expressions she can no longer see. It has moved, tangible, palpable, into her brain, the way memory invades the present in those who are old, the way gardens invade houses here, the way her tiny body steps into mine as intimate as anything I have witnessed and I have to force myself to be gentle with this frailty in the midst of my embrace. ~ Michael Ondaatje

There came a day when the Masons, laying aside their stones, became workmen of another kind, not less builders than before, but using truths for tools and dramas for designs, uplifting such a temple as Watts dreamed of decorating with his visions of the august allegory of the evolution of man. ~ Joseph Fort Newton

My idea of the real aristocrat is the master workman, no matter what his line of work may be. ~ Henry Latham Doherty

The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption. ~ Thomas Malthus

I have told you some of his faults, reader: as to his good points, he was one of the most honourable and capable men in Yorkshire; even those who disliked him were forced to respect him. He was much beloved by the poor, because he was thoroughly kind and very fatherly to them. To his workmen he was considerate and cordial. When he dismissed them from an occupation, he would try to set them on to something else, or, if that was impossible, help them to remove with their families to a district where work might possibly be had. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Let any one who is acquainted with what multitudes of people get their daily bread in this city by their labour, whether artificers or meer workmen - I say, let any man consider what must be the miserable condition of this town if, on a sudden, they should all be turned out of employment, that labour should cease, and wages for work be no more.

This was the case with us at that time; and had not the sums of money contributed in charity by well-disposed people of every kind, as well as abroad as at home, been prodigiously great, it had not been in the power of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to have kept the publick peace. Nor were they without apprehensions, as it was, that desperation should push the people upon tumults and cause them to rifle the houses of rich men and plunder the markets of provisions; in which case the country people, who brought provisions very freely and boldly to town, would have been terrified from coming any more, and the town would have sunk under an unavoidable famine. ~ Daniel Defoe

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. ~ Adam Smith

I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman. ~ Laurence Olivier

Growing up in an old city, you learn history's one true lesson: that history fades. Nothing sticks together for very long without immense effort. His own strong house is in a constant process of disintegration. He calls workmen to come repair the roof, paint the porches, replace sills; but even this work has no permanence, it will have to be done again in four or five years. Is this noble activity for a man? Patching, gluing, temporizing, begging for time? ~ Josephine Humphreys

A poor leader will tell you how many people work for them. A great leader will tell you how many people they work for. ~ Simon Sinek

To burn a city, there is needed only a child or a madman; but to rebuild it, architects, workmen, money, and especially time, will be needed.

Those who are content to corrupt ancient institutions, while at the same time preserving the exterior forms, have done as much evil to the human race. ~ Joseph De Maistre

God buries His workmen, but not His work.. ~ Henrietta Mears

The following year the house was substantially remodeled, and the conservatory removed. As the walls of the now crumbling wall were being torn down, one of the workmen chanced upon a small leatherbound book that had apparently been concealed behind a loose brick or in a crevice in the wall. By this time Emily Dickinson was a household name in Amherst. It happened that this carpenter was a lover of poetry- and hers in particular- and when he opened the little book and realized that that he had found her diary, he was "seized with a violent trembling," as he later told his grandson. Both electrified and terrified by the discovery, he hid the book in his lunch bucket until the workday ended and then took it home. He told himself that after he had read and savored every page, he would turn the diary over to someone who would know how to best share it with the public. But as he read, he fell more and more deeply under the poet's spell and began to imagine that he was her confidant. He convinced himself that in his new role he was no longer obliged to give up the diary. Finally, having brushed away the light taps of conscience, he hid the book at the back of an oak chest in his bedroom, from which he would draw it out periodically over the course of the next sixty-four years until he had virtually memorized its contents. Even his family never knew of its existence.

Shortly before his death in 1980 at the age of eighty-nine, the old man finally showed his most prized po ~ Jamie Fuller

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters. ~ Adam Smith

Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your purse open. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The present Mr. Parslow was teaching his son the craft; the two of them and their three workmen would scramble like industrious termites over the scaffolding they'd erected at the corner of the library, or over the roof of the chapel, and haul up bright new blocks of stone or rolls of shiny lead or balks of timber. The ~ Philip Pullman

From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a "disutility"; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. ~ E.F. Schumacher

Few of the early houses in New England were painted, or colored, as it was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of the early lists of workmen. ~ Alice Morse Earle

The more I move among workers and factories and other plants, the stronger I become convinced that it is advisable to have as [a company] president a practical man, preferably one who has risen from the very bottom of the ladder. Workmen, I find, have far more respect for such men than for collar-and-cuff executives knowing little or nothing about the different kinds of work which have to be done by the workers. Wherever circumstances call for placing a financier or lawyer or a papa's son at the head of a large organization, he should be made chairman or some other title, but not president. ~ B.C. Forbes

Others will give away large alms in order to be considered charitable people. Should they not give these out of their own wages, which so often they squander on trifles? If this has happened to you, do not forget that you are obliged to pay back to the person concerned all that you gave to the poor without the knowledge or consent of your employers. Then again, there is the one who has been entrusted by his employer with the supervision of the staff, or of workmen, who gives out wine and all sorts of other things to them if they ask him. ~ John Vianney

Like so much in the centre, it was under construction or reconstruction. Scaffolding, cranes, the temporary business of architects and workmen, the portable toilets, the short-term fencing, the crash-barriers and the skips. Rubble, more rubble. There was a history of Berlin to be written on the topic of rubble. ~ Gail Jones

Bright specks that were commute ships, little eggs that carried businessmen and white-collar workers around. The huge transport tubes that shot masses of workmen to factories and labor camps from their housing units. ~ Philip K. Dick

Mr. Thornton," said Margaret, shaking all over with her passion, "go down this instant, if you are not a coward. Go down and face them like a man. Save these poor strangers, whom you have decoyed here. Speak to your workmen as if they were human beings. Speak to them kindly. Don't let the soldiers come in and cut down poor-creatures who are driven mad. I see one there who is. If you have any courage or noble quality in you, go out and speak to them, man to man. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Old houses were scaffolding once and workmen whistling. ~ T. E. Hulme

Successful salesmen, authors, executives and workmen of every sort need patience. The great liability of youth is not inexperience but impatience. ~ William Feather

I believe in the honest craft of workmen. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become! ~ Charles Darwin

No greater care is required upon any works than upon such as are to withstand the action of water; for this reason, all parts of the work need to be done exactly according to the rules of the art which all workmen know, but few observe. ~ Frontinus

On fine summer evenings, at the hour when the warm streets are empty and the maids play shuttlecock in doorways, he would open his window and lean out on the sill. The river, which turns this part of Rouen into a sort of shabby little Venice, flowed by beneath him, yellow, violet or blue between its bridges and its railings. Some workmen were crouched down on the bank, washing their arms in the water. On poles projecting from the lofts up above, skeins of cotton hung out to dry. In front, away beyond the roof-tops, was a pure expanse of sky with a red sun setting. How good it would be over yonder, now! How cool under the beeches! He opened his nostrils to breathe in the wholesome country smells - which failed to reach him here. ~ Gustave Flaubert

In course of time the Brothers Cowper removed the manufacture of their printing machines from London, to Manchester. There they found skilled and energetic workmen, ready to carry their plans into effect. ~ James Nasmyth

There would be no idling in a co-operative workshop. Each workman, being an employer, has a spur to his own industry, and has a pecuniary reason for being watchful of the industry of his fellow workmen. ~ Leland Stanford

At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom ~ Plato

Refrain from drink which is the source of all evil-and the ruin of half the workmen in this Country. ~ George Washington

We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced towards us:
"I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely. ~ C.S. Lewis

What is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent? ~ William Morris

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. ~ Plato

The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations. ~ Auberon Herbert

A Glimpse
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word. ~ Walt Whitman

Nothing like being woken up after only a few hours of sleep by workmen wanting to come into your sanctuary to check water lines to put life into perspective. Wine glasses, dishes, yesterday's ghosts, and a fucking mess everywhere. It's not all about me, is it? Life moves around out there and sometimes it wants to come in and mess with me when all I want to do is turn over and hide. I am a fragile being, sometimes it takes almost nothing to knock me off my feet and make me tired of living. Sometimes I am so tired that everything is a gargantuan effort. But I'm strong, I always hang on and hold on. My emotions run from being elated and looking up to the sky and seeing all the infinite possibilities, to looking straight into the eyes of Hades. But you know me, I always come through with all my scars, all the love I carry in my heart, and my crooked tiara. Every single diamond in that tiara reflects all the light within me and within you. Indestructible ~ Riitta Klint

But the subordination must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited, of all the toilers, i.e., to the proletariat. Measures must be taken at once, overnight, to substitute for the specific methods of "official administration" by state officials the simple functions of "workmen and managers," functions which are already fully within the capacity of the average city dweller and can well be performed for "workmen's wages. ~ Vladimir Lenin

When Earth's last picture is painted And the tubes are twisted and dried When the oldest colors have faded
And the youngest critic has died
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it
Lie down for an aeon or two
'Till the Master of all good workmen Shall put us to work anew
And those that were good shall be happy They'll sit in a golden chair
They'll splash at a ten league canvas With brushes of comet's hair
They'll find real saints to draw from Magdalene, Peter, and Paul
They'll work for an age at a sitting And never be tired at all.
And only the Master shall praise us. And only the Master shall blame.
And no one will work for the money.
No one will work for the fame.
But each for the joy of the working, And each, in his separate star,
Will draw the thing as he sees it.
For the God of things as they are! ~ Rudyard Kipling

I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships on the waters. I love also absolute, profound silence, and, in short, I love everything that is around me, no matter where I am. ~ George Sand

Out of great Russia came three
dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
for: Bread, Peace, Land. ~ Carl Sandburg

The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession; like the honor of a soldier, dearer to him than life. ~ Thomas Carlyle

The hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions military police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements kept distances iris to iris queen of holes damp, hairy legs note of anger chanting and shouting konk sense of "mold" on the "muff" sense of "talk" on the "surface" konk2 all sorts of chemical girl who delivered the letter give it a bone plummy bare legs saturated in every belief and ignorance rational living private client bad bosom uncertain workmen mutton-tugger obedience to the rules of the logical system Lord Muck hot tears harmonica rascal
that's chaos can you produce chaos? Alice asked certainly I can produce chaos I said I produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos is handsome and attractive she said and more durable than regret I said and more nourishing than regret she said ~ Donald Barthelme

The manager cannot share his power with division superintendent or foreman or workman, but he can give them opportunities for developing their power. ~ Mary Parker Follett

Furthermore, there is no good ethical or economic reason for asking workmen and current producers to forego all economic gain in order to increase the purchasing power of all the wealth accumulated in past years. ~ Charles E. Wilson

Sure, I watched the workmen come and lower large pieces of rotten sheetrock and lift new clean panels on a pulley
from that same window months ago, and I could have written then, but I must have sensed her coming, the smoker, so I waited. ~ Kristen Henderson

In cheap years, it is pretended, workmen are generally more idle, and in dear ones more industrious than ordinary. A plentiful subsistence, therefore, it has been concluded, relaxes, and a scanty one quickens their industry. That a little more plenty than ordinary may render some workmen idle, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have this effect upon the greater part, or that men in general should work better when they are ill fed than when they are well fed, when they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they are generally in good health, seems not very probable. Years of dearth, it is to be observed, are generally among the common people years of sickness and mortality, which cannot fail to diminish the produce of their industry. ~ Adam Smith

Skinners guts were in turmoil from the beer and curry at the weekend and a viscous, silent eye-stinging killer of a fart slipped out of him, as poignantly weeping as a lover's last farewell, just as the lift stopped at the next floor to let in two men wearing overalls. Everybody suffered in silence. As the workmen got off at the following level, Skinner seized the opportunity, announcing, - That is minging, looking towards the departing workers. He knew that when it came to farting everybody turned into Old Etonian High Court Judges. Men would always be suspected before women and men in working clothes would always be blamed before men in suits. Those were the rules.

From "The Bedroom Secrets Of The Master Chefs ~ Irvine Welsh

Now burst above the city's cold twilight
The piercing whistles and the tower-clocks:
For day is done. Along the frozen docks
The workmen set their ragged shirts aright.
Thro' factory doors a stream of dingy light
Follows the scrimmage as it quickly flocks
To hut and home among the snow's gray blocks. --
I love you, human labourers. Good-night!
Good-night to all the blackened arms that ache!
Good-night to every sick and sweated brow,
To the poor girl that strength and love forsake,
To the poor boy who can no more! I vow
The victim soon shall shudder at the stake
And fall in blood: we bring him even now. ~ Trumbull Stickney

And while English workmen are often unemployed and in great want, Indian women weave cotton by machinery, for the Far East at wages of six-pence a day. In short, the intelligent manufacturers are fully aware that the day is not far off when they will not know what to do with the "factory hands" who formerly wove cotton-cloth for export from England. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

By half-past one the last drop of pleasure had evaporated, leaving nothing but headaches. We perceived that we were not splendid inhabitants of a splendid world, but a crew of underpaid workmen grown squalidly and dismally drunk. We went on swallowing the wine, but it was only from habit, and the stuff seemed suddenly nauseating ...
Most of my Saturday nights went in this way. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living. ~ George Orwell

Hardly a competent workman can be found who does not devote a considerable amount of time to studying just how slowly he can work and still convince his employer that he is going at a good pace. ~ Frederick W. Taylor

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city. Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Los Angeles didn't get like this often. He hated it when it did. And this time it was holding on. It had been brutal at the cemetery three weeks ago. His father's nine widows had looked ready to drop. The savage light had leached the color from the flowers. The savage heat had got at the mound of earth from the grave even under its staring green blanket of fake grass. He'd stayed to watch the workmen fill the grave. The earth was dry. Even the sharp walls of the grave were dry. What the hell was he doing remembering that? ~ Joseph Hansen

I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot. ~ Plutarch

Soundings must be made at all three mounds. We make a start with Tell Mozan. There is a village there, and with Hamoudi as ambassador we try and obtain workmen. The men are doubtful and suspicious.

"We do not need money," they say. "It has been a good harvest."

For this is a simple, and, I think, consequently a happy part of the world. Food is the only consideration. If the harvest is good, you are rich. For the rest of the year there is leisure and plenty, until the time comes to plough and sow once more.

"A little extra money," says Hamoudi, like the serpent of Eden, "is always welcome."

They answer simply: "But what can we buy with it? We have enough food until the harvest comes again."

And here, alas! the eternal Eve plays her part. Astute Hamoudi baits his hook. They can buy ornaments for their wives.

The wives nod their heads. This digging, they say, is a good thing!

Reluctantly the men consider the idea. ... ~ Agatha Christie

The new type of capitalists - the industrial leader - develops new talents with his new function in economic life and, above all, a new discipline and evaluation of labour. He allows commercial interests to recede to a certain extent and concentrates on the internal organization of his factory. The principle of expediency, methodical planning and calculability, which had become very important in the economy in the leading countries since the fifteenth century, now becomes all-powerful. The employer disciplines himself just as ruthless as he does his workmen and employees, and becomes just as much the slave of his concern as his staff. The raising of labour to the level of the ethical force, its glorification and adoration, is fundamentally nothing but the ideological transfiguration of the striving for success and profit and an attempt to stimulate even those elements who share least in the fruits of their labour into enthusiastic co-operation. The idea of freedom is part of the same ideology. ~ Arnold Hauser

The workmen in a factory may have a shadowy, unknown absentee "employer" - the thousands of individual owners of stock - whom "management" represents and tries to please by extra dividends. The workman's livelihood is at the disposition of strangers who make a single demand of their representatives: higher profits. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it. ~ Meg Whitman

The workman mindful of success, therefore, will naturally direct his attention to the faultless preparation of his stock, and in order to achieve this result, he will find it necessary not merely to make use of the freshest and finest goods, but also to exercise the most scrupulous care in their preparation, for, in cooking, care is half the battle. ~ Auguste Escoffier

Today in May 1938, the world around us suffers from the anxiety which the unemployment of millions brings with it. In Germany we begin to be anxious because we have not enough workmen. ~ Adolf Hitler

Where there is a wine-shop, there are the elements of disease and the frightful source of all that is at enmity with the interests of the workmen. ~ Charles Forbes Rene De Montalembert

What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.

It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters ra ~ Adam Smith

Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able to tune ballistae , catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key. For to the right and left in the beams are the holes in the frames through which the strings of twisted sinew are stretched by means of windlasses and bars, and these strings must not be clamped and made fast until they give the same correct note to the ear of the skilled workman. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Physicians attend to the business of physicians, and workmen handle the tools of workmen.
[Lat., Quod medicorum est
Promittunt medici, tractant fabrilia fabri.] ~ Horace