Manual Labor Quotes

• There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Dignity, Moments

  9 Copy quote

• Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

  Joseph Joubert

  Inspirational, Work, Commitment

  12 Copy quote

• All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Uplifting, Work, Teaching

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• Most people treat the office manual the way they treat a software manual. They never look at it.

  James Levine

  Work, People, Office

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• And what we've lost sight of is that performing manual labor with your hands is one of the most incredibly satisfying and positive things you can do.

  Nick Offerman

  Sight, Hands, Lost

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• Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for it's own sake but, as he was given to saying, it straightened out one's thoughts.

  Mary Ellen Chase

  Father, Work, Sake

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• Idleness is the enemy of the soul.

  Anselm of Canterbury

  Soul, Enemy, Idleness

  76 Copy quote

• Syzygy, inexorable, pancreatic, phantasmagoria - anyone who can use those four words in one sentence will never have to do manual labor.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Work, Writing, Use

  21 Copy quote

• Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

  John Gregory Dunne

  Art, Jobs, Writing

  John Gregory Dunne (2013). “Crooning”, p.196, Zola Books

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• Lately, the only thing keeping me from being a serial killer is my distaste for manual labor.

  Scott Adams

  Death, Suicide, Serial Killer

  Scott Adams (2007). “Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Explains Cloning, Blouse Monsters, Voting Machines, Romance, Monkey G ods, How to Avoid Being Mistaken for a Rodent, and More”, p.440, Penguin

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• Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.

  Benedict of Nursia

  Reading, Soul, Enemy

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• There's not an instruction manual on how to deal with success, so you just have to rely on having great friends and a good team.

  Bryan Adams

  Team, Great Friend, Instruction

  "Bryan Adams on learning to deal with fame". Interview with Shirley Halperin, uk.reuters.com. March 22, 2011.

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• We can't hire out our own inner work, but we can do the manual labor with delight and decency.

  Sakyong Mipham

  Delight, Labor, Manuals

  Sakyong Mipham (2013). “The Shambhala Principle: Discovering Humanity's Hidden Treasure”, p.99, Harmony

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• Some of the best ideas I get seem to happen when I'm doing mindless manual labor or exercise. I'm not sure how that happens, but it leaves me free for remarkable ideas to occur.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Exercise, Ideas, Remarkable

  "Interview: Chuck Palahniuk on 'Choke'". Interview with Aaron Hillis, www.ifc.com. September 24.

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• Balance Sheets are meaningless. Our accounting systems are still based on the assumption that 80% of costs are manual labor.

  Peter Drucker

  Balance, Cost, Assumption

  10 Copy quote

• If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.

  Doug Larson

  Fun, Work, Weekend

  14 Copy quote

• I'd rather do manual labor than sit behind a desk. And as my grandparents got older, I'd fly out there and help out around the farm. We'd tear barns down; we'd build barns. I'd rather be outside rolling hay or driving the tractors.

  Kellan Lutz

  Grandparent, Tears, Rolling

  Interview with Mark Jacobs, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 19, 2010.

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• Growing up, being watched from the outside... it's kind of very taxing and maybe I should just do some kind of manual labor-it might be more relaxing. But I can't, it's not in my nature.

  Jennifer Connelly

  Growing Up, Might, Kind

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• Any manual labor I've done was purely by mistake.

  Mac McAnally

  Work, Mistake, Done

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• There wasn't much white people would allow us to do in those days. You could be a schoolteacher or an athlete to get away from the manual labor and servant-type jobs, but there wasn't much else they were going to allow you [to] do.

  Hank Aaron

  Jobs, Athlete, White

  8 Copy quote

• As the only class distinction available in a democracy, the college degree has created a caste society as rigid as ancient India's. Condemning elitism and simultaneously quaking in fear that our children won't become members of the elite, we send them to college, not to learn, but to "be" college graduates, rationalizing our snobbery with the cliché that high technology has eliminated the need for the manual labor that we secretly hold in contempt.

  Florence King

  Education, Children, Technology

  Florence King (1991). “Lump It Or Leave It”, p.77, Macmillan

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• Painting is manual labor, no different from any other; it can be done well or poorly.

  George Grosz

  Work, Different, Done

  "Art of the 20th Century, Part 1". Book by Karl Ruhrberg, Klaus Honnef, Manfred Schneckenburger, Christiane Fricke, p. 190, 2000.

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• I would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics.

  Natalie Merchant

  Writing, Labor, Manuals

  7 Copy quote

• Sage,” Adrian declared. “These hands don’t do manual labor.

  Richelle Mead

  Hands, Sage, Labor

  Richelle Mead (2011). “Bloodlines”, p.89, Penguin

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• Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Imagination, Poetry

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

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