Jill Lepore Quotes

No one should do a job he can do in his sleep.

Dentists seem to me very orderly, businesslike people who appear to become somewhat bored with the routine of their work after a period of time. Perhaps I'm wrong.

For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.

The instant people specialize, it's in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon.

Where the whole man is involved there is no work. Work begins with the division of labor.

In a sufficiently prosperous society where people specialize sufficiently, and where enough of the crappy work is done by machines, all work becomes art.

I worked as a trainee manager for two years after leaving university - then got bored with the nine to five.

Middle-class people worry a lot about money. They worry a lot about job security, and they do a lot of nine-to-five stuff.

I don't ever want to have a job where I just punch a clock.

I can probably earn more in an hour of writing or even teaching than I could save in a whole week of cooking. Specialization is undeniably a powerful social and economic force. And yet it is also debilitating. It breeds helplessness, dependence, and ignorance and, eventually, it undermines any sense of responsibility.

I would never have got involved in something that just meant turning up at eight and leaving at five.

A rule of thumb: If the company you work for provides a product or service that's pretty much the same as what was offered last year and a few years before that, it might be time to start looking for something new.

Eventually you get bored and you want to work.

Oh, what a day-to-day business life is.

One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.

For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back - both professionally as well as financially.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Initially we both did a bit of everything towards making each game but as we began to hire people and the business grew we naturally went in different directions, and away from the coalface of development.

The demographic weight of countries such as China and India exercise a massive pressure on our wages and salaries. They have accomplished massive technological advances and the revolution in information technology has reduced the costs of transport.

In most careers, you find something you do well, and you tie an increasingly larger bow on the package.

I think it starts to feel really redundant when you start to do something the same way over and over again. I don't think it's good to become so dependent on a certain writing process.

There's no way that I could do a 9 to 5 job. There's no way. I was not cut out for that. You come in and you work for three months on the one job. They say, 'Great,' you know, and you're on to the next one - and you never even got fired. It's wonderful.

I don't want to get pigeonholed.

That the way to achieve higher standards of living for all is through science and technology, taking advantage of better tools, methods and organization.

Work is not the curse, but drudgery is.