Workmen Quotes - Page 3

• If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads or a wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the union of my trade. If I disapproved of its policy, I would join in order to fight that policy; if the union leaders were dishonest, I would join in order to put them out. I believe in the union and I believe that all men who are benefited by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their power in the common interests advanced by the union.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Believe, Fighting, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt (2013). “Bully!”, p.366, Simon and Schuster

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• When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours 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!

  Rudyard Kipling

  Lying, Two, Needs

  "When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted" l. 1 (1892)

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• As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah , so the division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital .

  Karl Marx

  People, Division, Jehovah

  Karl Marx (2007). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production”, p.396, Cosimo, Inc.

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• No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris . Beginning with the market - where, for lack of money, I bought only a piece of a long cucumber - the workman in his blue overall, the most ardent followers of Cubism , everything showed a definite feeling for proportion, clarity, an accurate sense of form, of a more painterly kind of painting, even in the canvases of second-rate artists.

  Marc Chagall

  Artist, Blue, Paris

  "Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 - 1922". Book by Christoph Vitali, p. 29, 1991.

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• 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

  Wisdom, Trying, Demand

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• Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forevermore. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Girl, Mother, Children

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• [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

  Simple, Self, Ambitious

  "Science in History". Book by John Desmond Bernal, Volume 2, 1954.

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• In many instances the conduct of colored workmen, and those who have spoken for them, has not been in asking or demanding that equal rights be accorded to them as to white workmen, but somehow conveying the idea that they are to be petted and coddled and given special consideration and special privilege. Of course that can't be done.

  Samuel Gompers

  Rights, Ideas, White

  "The Samuel Gompers Papers: The American Federation of Labor and the Great War, 1917-18". Book by Samuel Gompers, edited by Peter J. Albert and Grace Palladino, p. 348, 2006.

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• Manner and morals have improved, improved wages and world travel during the war have had effect, and the farm labourer now is an intelligent, self respecting workman, on a level at least with the town artisan. The village rustic of the past no longer exists outside of the comic papers.

  Flora Thompson

  War, Intelligent, Past

  Flora Thompson (2008). “The Peverel papers: nature notes written in Liphoo, Hampshire, 1921-1927”

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• According to man's environment, society has made as many different types of men as there are varieties in zoology. The differences between a soldier, a workman, a statesman, a tradesman, a sailor, a poet, a pauper and a priest, are more difficult to seize, but quite considerable as the differences between a wolf, a lion, an ass, a crow, a sea-calf, a sheep, and so on.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Sheep, Sea

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• 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

  Mean, Exercise, Men

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• 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

  Art, Water, Needs

  Sextus Julius Frontinus (1913). “The two books on the water supply of the city of Rome”

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• Now in regard to trades and other means of livelihood, which ones are to be considered becoming to a gentleman and which ones are vulgar, we have been taught, in general, as follows. First, those means of livelihood are rejected as undesirable which incur people's ill-will, as those of tax-gatherers and usurers. Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Mean, Skills, Ill Will

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Cicero (Illustrated)”, p.3108, Delphi Classics

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• God is more interested in the workman than in the work.

  Warren W. Wiersbe

  Warren W. Wiersbe (2015). “The BE Series Bundle: Paul's Letters: Be Right, Be Wise, Be Encouraged, Be Free, Be Rich, Be Joyful, Be Complete, Be Ready, Be Faithful”, p.779, David C Cook

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• This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

  Adam Smith

  Men, Numbers, People

  Adam Smith (2016). “The Wealth of Nations: the Great Master”, p.16, VM eBooks

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• Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

  Adam Smith

  Order, Numbers, People

  "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, (Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2), 1776.

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• The workman still is greater than his work.

  Menander

  Work, Stills, Greater

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• 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

  Men, Race, Would Be

  Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.28

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• We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the business man is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Men, Practice, Wish

  Address by Theodore Roosevelt Before The Convention Of The National Progressive Party in Chicago, www.ssa.gov. August 1912.

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• The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Reading, Gardening, Genius

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.636, Modern Library

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• Until the end of the Middle Ages, and in many cases afterwards too, in order to obtain initiation in a trade of any sort whatever--whether that of courtier, soldier, administrator, merchant or workman--a boy did not amass the knowledge necessary to ply that trade before entering it, but threw himself into it; he then acquired the necessary knowledge.

  Philippe Aries

  Boys, Order, Soldier

  Philippe Ariès (1962). “Centuries of childhood: a social history of family life”, Vintage

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• 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

  Work, Wages, Branches

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “On Liberty: Mill's Works”, p.100, VM eBooks

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• Anyone who has undergone home repair lately knows that your everyday artisan uses language so loosely and makes false promises so glibly as to make your politicians, even the presidential candidate, seem like a model of accuracy and rectitude. 'Be there Wednesday at nine,' the workman will tell you. It is a lie. He is humoring you. He says it to silence you, the way you tell a child you will take it to Disneyland if it will stop crying.

  Mary McGrory

  Children, Lying, Home

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• I consider Les Nourritures Terrestres as a frightening book: "Look for God in no other place than everywhere." Go and tell that to a workman, an engineer!

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Book, Looks, Frightening

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• There is nothing fairer than workmen having unions of their mutual benefit.

  Will Rogers

  Mutual Benefit, Benefits, Unions

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