Labour Quotes - Page 8

• The difference between machines and human beings is that human beings can be reproduced by unskilled labour.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Technology, Differences, Machines

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• The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labour must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible.

  Clara Zetkin

  Two, Competition, Males

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• Historically, Labour has used technology as a form of control. We would use pagers and faxes to send out messages telling people what line to take. The key learning from the Obama campaign is to use technology to empower your supporters.

  Douglas Alexander

  Technology, Keys, People

  "Yes we can: Labour election campaign to adapt Barack Obama's blueprint" by Patrick Wintour, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• Our workforce is very co-operative, very flexible, easy to work with and one of the big selling points. The idea that Britain is still back in the labour market of the '70s is utterly bizarre.

  Vince Cable

  Ideas, Easy, Selling

  "Vince Cable hits out at 'backward' Tory rightwingers" by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt, www.theguardian.com. March 9, 2012.

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• There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people.

  Vince Cable

  Banking Crisis, People, Debt

  Liberal Democrat conference: Vince Cable speech in full, www.theguardian.com. September 22, 2010.

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• I love not knowing what's going to happen next. With work, you never know. You rehearse and strive and get it right sometimes, and still you never know. Some people are like that with their marriages. They work and strive and labour and toil at them. God, what a bore! What an unromantic bore!

  Celia Imrie

  Knowing, People, Toil

  Interview with Sally Vincent, www.theguardian.com. March 18, 2005.

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• These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest.

  Samuel Johnson

  Country, Honesty, Integrity

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1811). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes”, p.115

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• One of the striking features of the form of globalisation that has now been established is that it is based on the premise that goods and even capital should be free to roam but labour must remain imprisoned within the nation state.

  Roberto Unger

  States, Form, Should

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• When he painted a road, the roadmakers were there in his imagination, when he painted the turned earth of a ploughed field, the gesture of the blade turning the earth was included in his own act. Whenever he looked he saw the labour of existence; and this labour, recognised as such, was what constituted reality for him. (On Vincent Van Gogh)

  John Berger

  Reality, Imagination, Earth

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• Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.

  William Morris

  Men, Makers, Made

  William Morris, May Morris (2012). “The Collected Works of William Morris: With Introductions by His Daughter May Morris”, p.205, Cambridge University Press

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• Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?

  Thomas Hardy

  Three, Sake, Quarters

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the d'Ubervilles”, p.146, Xist Publishing

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• Let us look for secret things somewhere in the world on the blue shore of silence or where the storm has passed rampaging like a train. There the faint signs are left, coins of time and water, debris ,celestial ash and the irreplaceable rapture of sharing in the labour of soitude in the sand.

  Pablo Neruda

  Blue, Water, Silence

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• We have an army for fighting as well as an army for labour. For fighting, we have the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies but even they do a dual job, warfare and production. With these two kinds of armies, and with a fighting army skilled in these two tasks and in mass work, we can overcome our difficulties and defeat Japanese imperialism.

  Mao Zedong

  Jobs, Army, Fighting

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.56, Lulu.com

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• As our economy faces up to potential labour shortages due to our ageing population and as it moves to a new level of sophistication to compete with the rest of the world, we're going to need every Australian on board pulling their weight, rejoining the workforce, gaining new skills. Writing off individuals and communities suffering from poverty just creates a dead weight for our economy to drag along.

  Julia Gillard

  Jobs, Moving, Writing

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• It is the omnipresent rush of water which give the Este Gardens their peculiar character. From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channeling the stone rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy conches, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down the ivy-matted banks.

  Edith Wharton

  Rain, Character, Garden

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• This is a proud day and an important step forward in the fight for equality in Britain. The overwhelming majority of Labour MPs supported this change to make sure marriage reflects the value we place on long-term, loving relationships whoever you love.

  Ed Miliband

  Fighting, Gay, Mps

  "Gay marriage debate in quotes". www.theguardian.com. February 6, 2013.

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• God's children improve all advantages to advance their grand end; they labour to grow better by blessings and crosses, and to make sanctified use of all things.

  Richard Sibbes

  Christian, Children, Blessing

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• Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
  Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
  Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
  The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
  Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
  Chief nourisher in life's feast...

  William Shakespeare

  Hurt, Sleep, Insomnia

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 2, sc. 2, l. 36

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• The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

  Samuel Johnson

  Home, Ambition, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.431

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• She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Party, Independent, Heard

  Evelyn Waugh (1958). “Vile Bodies”, p.23, Obelix Books

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• The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.

  H. L. Mencken

  Work, Stress, Men

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.250, Knopf

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• Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.

  Samuel Johnson

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.27

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• Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Writing, Obviousness, Done

  "The Red-Headed League" (1891)

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• I'm honoured to have been selected to be the Labour candidate for Manchester Central.

  Lucy Powell

  Manchester, Has Beens, Candidates

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• In Scotland, the indication is that for the Westminster elections at least, Labour voters are satisfied with their government.

  Lucy Powell

  Government, Scotland, Voters

  "A good night for Labour - phew!" by Lucy Powell, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2008.

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