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Protestant Work Ethic Quotes

Browse 21 quotes about Protestant Work Ethic.

Protestant Work Ethic Quotes

“Middle-class Americans, like myself and my fellow seekers, have been raised with the old-time Protestant expectation that hard work will be rewarded with material comfort and security. This has never been true of the working class, most of which toils away at wages incommensurate with the effort required. And now, the sociologists agree, it is increasingly untrue of the educated middle class that stocks our corporate bureaucracies.”

WorkEffortRewardsEmploymentMiddle ClassWorking ClassWorkingAmericansProtestant Work Ethic
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
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“While Europe appears to maintain more reticence embracing it, in America there is no question that work can only be discussed as a secular sacrament, with all the indignity one might expect from such a degrading genus. The Protestant qualifier to Protestant work ethic long ago dissipated, leaving the peculiarly American artifact of viewing one’s wages as a moral reward, one’s continuous employment as a state of grace and one’s retirement as an earthly paradise merited by one’s good works.”

WorkRetirementWork EthicAmerican CultureWage SlaveryProtestant Work Ethic
Book:The Invention of Work
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“Any law, however well meant as a law, which has become a bounty on unthrift, idleness, bastardy and beer-drinking, must be put an end to. In all ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle man there is no place in this England of ours. He that will not work, and save according to his means, let him go elsewhither; let him know that for him the Law has made no soft provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the Law of Nature, which the Law of England would vainly contend against in the long-run, he is doomed either to quit these habits, or miserably be extruded from this Earth, which is made on principles different from these. He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity: there is no law juster than that. Would to heaven one could preach it abroad into the hearts of all sons and daughters of Adam, for it is a law applicable to all; and bring it to bear, with practical obligation strict as the Poor-Law Bastille, on all! We had then, in good truth, a 'perfect constitution of society;' and 'God's fair earth and Task-garden, where whosoever is not working must be begging or stealing,' were then actually what always, through so many changes and struggles, it is endeavouring to become.”

WorkProtestant Work Ethic
Author:Thomas Carlyle
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“the true Zürich is the city of Zwingli, Protestant work ethics and endless money that flows through the streets lubricating its more than well-functioning economy. The city of banking, reinsurance, assent management and home to way too many corporate & tax lawyers.”

MoneyEconomyBankingProtestant Work EthicZurichZwingliReinsurance
Book:2017: Our Summer of Reunions: Braai Seasons with Howl Gang (Howl Gang Legend)
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“Effort in the Calvinist doctrine had still another psychological meaning. The fact that one did not tire in that unceasing effort and that one succeeded in one's moral as well as one's secular work was a more or less distinct sign of being one of the chosen ones. The irrationality of such compulsive effort is that the activity is not meant to create a desired end but serves to indicate whether or not something will occur which has been determined beforehand, independent of one's own activity or control. This mechanism is a well-known feature of compulsive neurotics. Such persons when afraid of the outcome of an important undertaking may, while awaiting an answer, count the windows of houses or trees on the street. If the number is even, a person feels that things will be alright; if it is uneven, it is a sign that he will fail. Frequently this doubt does not refer to a specific instance but to a person's whole life, and the compulsion to look for "signs" will pervade it accordingly. Often the connection between counting stones, playing solitaire, gambling, and so on, and anxiety and doubt, is not conscious. A person may play solitaire out of a vague feeling of restlessness and only an analysis might uncover the hidden function of his activity: to reveal the future. In Calvinism this meaning of effort was part of the religious doctrine. Originally it referred essentially to moral effort, but later on the emphasis was more and more on effort in one's occupation and on the results of this effort; that is, success or failure in business. Success became the sign of God's grace; failure, the sign of damnation.”

PredestinationOcdCalvinism1941DivinationProtestant Work EthicCapitalist Religion
Book:Escape from Freedom
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“I have always known that there were spellbinding evil parts for women. For one thing, I was taken at an early age to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Never mind the Protestant work ethic of the dwarfs. Never mind the tedious housework-is-virtuous motif. Never mind the fact that Snow White is a vampire -- anyone who lies in a glass coffin without decaying and then comes to life again must be. The truth is that I was paralysed by the scene in which the evil queen drinks the magic potion and changes her shape. What power, what untold possibilities!”

MindFactsAgeLyingEvilWhiteKnownTakenMagicOne ThingPossibilityDrinkTruth IsSceneShapesEthicsSevenGlassesSnowVampireQueensVirtuousWork EthicTediousProtestantsCoffinsHouseworkDwarfsSnow WhiteMotifsProtestant Work Ethic
Book:Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing
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“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”

MightRememberMoneyFiveGenerationsProduceSixHundredMurderSevenProfitScorePoundsCrownsBreedingBegetsOffspringGet MoneyProtestant Work Ethic
Book:The select works of Benjamin Franklin
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