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Working Quotes

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Working Quotes

“She started choosing her words carefully. 'It's the way you were trying to earn money that made me mad,' she began. Then she leaned down until her face was on a level with his, still talking slowly, still picking her words thoughtfully. 'You see, colored people have been shining shoes and washing clothes and scrubbing floors for years and years. White people seem to think that's the only kind of work they're fit to do. The hard work. The dirty work. The work that pays the least.' She thought about this small dark apartment they were living in, about 116th Street which was filled to overflowing with people who lived in just such apartments as this, about the white people on the downtown streets who stared at her with open hostility in their eyes, and she started talking swiftly, forgetting to choose her words. 'I'm not going to let you begin at eight doing what white folks figure all eight-year-old colored boys ought to do. For if you're shining shoes at eight, you'll probably be doing the same thing when you're eighty. And I'm not going to have it.”

“I’m a firm believer that most people who do great things are doing them for the first time. Returning to my theory of hiring, I’d rather have someone all fired up to do something for the first time than someone who’s done it before and isn’t that excited to do it again. You rarely go wrong giving someone who is high potential the shot.”

“Do all the works you can while you still have the strength to work.”

“We are capable of great works through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit.”

“In a job you trade your freedom and time for money.”

“Our minds become slaves to those we see as having total power to control us and to cause pain to us. We are quick to give up control of ourselves to those who have the power to rule us as long as they also have the power to feed us. This is the fundamental construct of a feudal society.”

“We want a house, a car, a fancy f*cking vacation, and prestige. So what do we do? We go to school and we get jobs we hate to pay for the things we want. We deal with people we don't like and waste years of our lives sitting in stark fluorescent-lit rooms and listening to coworkers who bore us so we can pay for a small amount of precious time to enjoy what makes us happy, to achieve a fraction of our lives just feeling as if it was all worth it. We sacrifice to earn.”