Quotes about Work

He acknowledged our God-given need to matter by telling us to rule over them and subdue them. Furthermore, God could have made the garden of Eden self-maintaining. Instead, He appointed Adam to work it and take care of it. God could have created the animals with names, but He knew Adam could use the challenge and the satisfaction naming them would bring. In the same way Eve received a purpose that granted significance. No one else was a suitable helper to Adam.

Lord, You will establish peace for us, for You have also done all our work for us. Isaiah 26:12

Those two words have echoed unceasingly in my mind ever since. In overriding matters God seems to work in themes with me.

Opposition is anything that opposes (1) us, (2) the work God desires to do in us, and (3) the work God desires to do through us.

I've since arrived at the conclusion that God often makes children who are going to be extra work extra cute.

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work.

Rationalization is Resistance's right-hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.

When Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, he was counseling the warrior to act territorially, not hierarchically. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else. The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on earth could stand against them.

In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture. We overthrow the programming of advertising, movies, video games, magazines, TV, and MTV by which we have been hypnotized from the cradle. We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.

A professional does not take success or failure personally.