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Manual Labor Quotes

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Manual Labor Quotes

“Beside him was a small employee sweeping the floor, just by Andrei. The cleaner clenched the broom with effort and quick movements. She moved forcefully, with so much vigor that one saw a girl scout. But wrinkles had already formed on her neck, that sweated, moistening her black wig. Andrei stared, noticing she was damn good at her job, but too good. She would bend her legs to sweep the difficult corners of the shop. The woman would adjust the picture frames on the wall and wipe down the chairs, tasks which were not part of her required duties. Whenever her co-workers talked casually, the woman steered the conversation to the topic of the conditions of the store, which she knew, or to certain customers, who she knew, or to how business was, which she knew. She drove back home with a smile, knowing she’d done a great job that day. “They need me! Otherwise, who else would have caught the slip hazard by the trash? No one, not even my manager!” she would say before bed. She was naturally helpful. It was tragic to see that kind employee, happy like a little child, be so great at some stupid shop, when in her pumped a heart large enough to fuel the future, a forest, or a country. There was no structure of life, or invention yet created, whose mechanism could righteously allocate the innocence and love embedded in the warm blood of a human being. There deserved to be. She was sacred. But the world, decidedly corporate, had seized her, eaten her up, devouring what was left of the lively.”

AmericaWorkSocietyCapitalismLaborInnocenceWagesManual LaborNine To Five
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“How different everything is for the craftsman who transforms a part of the world with his own hands, who can see his work as emanating from his being and can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object — whether a square of canvas, a chair or a clay jug — and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years..”

WorkCraftsmanshipManual Labor
Book:The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
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“By the time of the sixth patriarch, Hui-neng, it is recorded, monks were polishing rice as well as cutting firewood. That is to say, at this time manual labor had become an essential part of Zen training. The Zen master Pai-chang (720–814), whose Ching-kuei (Monastic Regulations) forms the model for Zen communal life, set the example himself for this kind of life by participating in manual labor with the other monks even in his old age. This was in accordance with his famous expression, "If one does not do any work for a day, one should not eat for a day." The Zen goal of living with an "ordinary mind" may be said to have been developed through a life such as this.”

ZenManual Labor
Book:The Zen Life
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“We Pashtuns love shoes but don't love the cobbler; we love our scarves and blankets but do not respect the weaver. Manual workers made a great contribution to our society but received no recognition, and this is the reason so many of them joined the Taliban—to finally achieve status and power.”

ClassPrejudiceManual Labor
Book:I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
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“Work. Good, honest work, whether it’s working with your hands to create an artwork, or manual labour, brings forth a sense of divinity at play. The only prerequisite is that whatever the work is, it is done sincerely and in congruence with the soul’s true origin and intent, then, without any effort, one experiences a flow, wherein one feels a part of the plan of the entire universe.”

ArtSoulPlayHandsUniverseWorkEffortConsciousnessHonestAwarenessDivineMindfulnessFlowLaborExperienceQuoteGoodDivinitySincereFeelingPresentMomentCreateSincerelyTranscendenceKamandKojouriKamand KojouriArtworkPower Of NowPhysicalOriginIntentTranscendManual LaborCongruenceRequirementPrerequisite
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“You know, I understand the way that some people view manual labor. With a kind of sneer, looking down your nose at it, like it’s less. But I’ve never found anything more satisfying than going out and making a change with my own two hands. Seeing a project through from start to finish, knowing that what I did…that it changed something. The shape of an object, the landscape. When you’re fighting fires, that your hands helped put up the blockade that preserved the wilderness. That you dug those trenches, ran those fire lines that saved houses, trees, animals. Lives. There’s no shame in it.”

Blue CollarManual Labor
Book:Cowboy Christmas Redemption
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“Moving heavy objects allowed me to feel manly in the eyes of other men. With the women it didn't matter, but I enjoyed subtly intimidating the guys with bad backs who thought they were helping out by telling us how to pack the truck. The thinking was that because we were furniture movers, we obviously weren't too bright. In addition to being strong and stupid, we were also thought of as dangerous. It might have been an old story to Patrick and the others, but I got a kick out of being mistaken as volatile. All I had to do was throw down my dolly with a little extra force, and a bossy customer would say, "Let's just all calm down and try to work this out.”

IntimidatingManlyGender StereotypesUnintelligentManual LaborMovers
Book:Me Talk Pretty One Day
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“At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.”

NeedsPhilosophyRealityIntellectualConceptsConcernLaborCommittedSeparationAbstractBoresManualsUntruePrevailingEnslavementTranscendingPhilosophicSubversionManual Labor
Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“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.”

NeedsChildrenEducationClassTechnologyDemocracyCollegeMembersDegreesLaborIndiaOur ChildrenAncientAvailableDistinctionContemptGraduatesElitesManualsCastesCollege EducationCondemningElitismSnobberyCollege DegreeCollege GraduatesManual LaborAncient IndiaClass DistinctionHigh Technology
Book:Lump It Or Leave It
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“Lately, the only thing keeping me from being a serial killer is my distaste for manual labor.”

DeathLaborSuicideKillersManualsSerialsSerial KillerDistasteManual Labor
Book: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
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“By TV standards - I'm not comparing it to manual labor by any means - by TV comedy standards, it is the hardest job I will ever, ever have. There is nothing that could be harder. I mean, when you combine the amount of writing that has to be done - sharp writing - with the fact that you then take it to the street and improvise with both celebrities who have no idea what's going to happen and real people who are not actors or comedians who don't even know I'm about to talk to them... It's lightning in a bottle every time.”

PeopleKnowsWritingMeanIdeasRealDoneFactsHappensJobsActorsComedyStreetsTvsAmountStandardsLaborHarderHardestNo IdeaComedianCompareBottlesLightningManualsHardest JobManual Labor
Author:Billy Eichner
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“Home economics should find its way into the curriculum of every school because the scientific study of a problem pertaining to food, shelter or clothing... raises manual labor that might be drudgery to the plane of intelligent effort that is always self-respecting...Home economics is not one department, in the sense in which dairying or entomology or soils is a department. It is not a single speciality... Many technical and educational departments will grow out of it as time goes on.”

WayShouldSelfProblemHomeMightSchoolGrowsEffortStudyGoes OnEconomicsLaborIntelligentRaisesEducationalPlanesSoilDepartmentClothingsShelterCurriculumManualsDrudgeryTime Goes OnManual LaborHome Economics
Author:Martha Van Rensselaer
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“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”

ThinkingMenChildrenStatesHouseOpinionClassMaterialsLaborAccountsScaredArtisticProtestMaterialismHardshipDoomedUglinessManualsBank AccountsThinking ManManual LaborQuake
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
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“Never, however, do I take shortcuts. There is not path of least resistance in my training. What I do equates to hard manual labor, disciplined grunt work. Once you permit yourself to compromise, you fail yourself. You might be able to fool some people, but you can never fool yourself. Your toughest critic is the one you face every morning in the mirror.”

PeopleHardMightAbleFacesMorningPathFailingFoolTrainingLaborMirrorsCriticsResistanceCompromisePermitEvery MorningManualsShortcutsGruntManual LaborPath Of Least Resistance
Book:Run!: 26.2 Stories of Blisters and Bliss
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