Workers Quotes

“You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life… when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings… when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors… when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats...”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“All the mega corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the workers, environment, and future generations. As with the banking sector, they play games with the lives of millions, hysterically reject any kind of government intervention when the profits are rolling in, but are quick to pass the bill for the cleanup and the far-reaching consequences of these avoidable tragedies to the public when things go wrong. We have a straightforward proposal: if they want public money, we want public control. It's that simple.”
― Michael Hureaux-Perez

“Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.”
― Noam Chomsky

“All political movements are basically anti-creative — since a political movement is a form of war. “There’s no place for impractical dreamers around here,” that’s what they always say. “Your writing activities will be directed, kindly stop horsing around.” “As for the smoking of marijuana, it is the exploitation for the workers.” Both favor alcohol and are against pot.”
― William S. Burroughs

“The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.”
― Núria Añó

“People would look at teachers differently if they had to wear the uniform for their second job when on the clock”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“He was thinking that the cities, perhaps, needed to look into the future even more than the country did. They should look ahead for forty, eighty, one hundred and sixty years, to a strong and healthy plain of population - or to an overworked, weakened, underfed, and infertile desert.”
― Jim Thompson, Heed the Thunder

“Watch out for when you're not working, you're not talking about work.”
― Brother Pedro

“Persuading people they have more power than they do and ignoring the very real social barriers to attainment primes them for self-blame when reality fails to deliver. The worst extremes of phoney empowerment, argues Frayne, can be found in the trite aphorisms of the self-help industry, where popular psychologists ascribe to us almost magical abilities to alter circumstances despite the harsh realities constraining us. In a world where problems like disadvantage, unemployment and work-related distress are so socially embedded, downplaying the very real obstacles to opportunity is regularly experienced as yet another form of punishment, yet another form of blaming and shaming the individual.”
― James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

“Psycho-compulsion is therefore not just about instilling people with a so-called correct employability mindset. It is a mechanism for penalising deviation from what it defines as the right set of attitudes and behaviours. ‘What psycho-compulsion therefore attempts to do is silence alternative discourses to the neoliberal myth that you are to blame for your unemployment,’ said Friedli. ‘At the same time, it undermines and erodes alternative frameworks around which people can come together in solidarity to act against the social causes of worklessness.’ In short, psycho-compulsion not only pathologises and punishes a claimant’s dissent, it depoliticises the causes of joblessness (which discourages collective action), and it does so by resuscitating Margaret Thatcher’s earlier myth that unemployment can be reduced to character deficiencies.”
― James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

“AI doesn't take any breaks. Plus, AI won't file sexual harassment charges when your boss flirts with it.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“There was a lot of blatant secrecy among the workers that had built the dangerous Desoto Solar Farm.”
― Steven Magee

“Nitrogen gas has killed many workers and has maimed far more!”
― Steven Magee, Toxic Altitude

“Some professional astronomy telescopes are associated with unusual illnesses and deaths in their workers.”
― Steven Magee, Toxic Altitude

“My manager once told me to buy takeout food for the workers I supervised to reward them for completing a project. I asked him 'What is the budget I have for it?'. He told me there was no budget and I had to buy it!!! It was all downhill from there!”
― Steven Magee

“When I was younger, I never had an appreciation of the health issues older workers were experiencing.”
― Steven Magee

“Brenda was having none of it. She sat there like one of the working-class ladies of his childhood, bitter fighters with bright red faces, emanating a savage scary blankness that he understood to mean: Fuck you, you are not forgiven.”
― George Saunders, Liberation Day

“The corruption has been allowed to go on for too long and the masses will always associate the name ‘Police’ with corrupt public workers.”
― Steven Magee

“I have had so many negative interactions with electrical utility workers that I now avoid interacting with them!”
― Steven Magee

“I see a lot of commonality between the health issues high altitude workers develop and Long COVID symptoms.”
― Steven Magee

“...people can be divided into two groups: those who have worked in a bar, or cafe, or restaurant, or shop, and those who have not. And while it would be both unfair and untrue to say that everyone in the latter category treats those in the former as a second-class citizen, it is probably accurate to say that virtually nobody from the first category will do so.”
― Shaun Bythell, Confessions of a Bookseller

“I wouldn't work in a hospital again! They do not tell you about the high disease risks when they hire you. It is well known that hospital jobs are lemons today with the pandemic. One of my coworkers was suffering with chronic fatigue from her thirties onward. She has never been healthy since working there. She probably had an infection from a sickly patient and never recovered.”
― Steven Magee

“Stop counting the forgotten people in this world, they are too many! Count the unforgotten, you will quickly find out the number of the forgotten!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“...Працювали на фабриках, що вже майже нічого не випускали, крім важких індустріальних стогонів.”
― Артем Чех, Хто ти такий?

“The workers in professional astronomy were not informed about the extensive biological research that had been performed on high and very high altitude biological exposures.”
― Steven Magee

“There is an effort underway in the USA by the rich to have workers working really long hours for not a lot of money or benefits.”
― Steven Magee

“The cloak of the worker is heavy:
It's a hero's cape for all that you do.”
― Lowrey E. Gray, 42

“There is no greater compliment than to be congratulated by one's peers.”
― George S. Midla "From Love to War"

“When gears synchronize and hands come together, miracles unfold on the factory floor.

A heartfelt salute to the hardworking souls on this “Industrial Workers of the World Day.”
― Srinivas Mishra