Ray Bradbury Quotes

Am I the only one who can't seem to reconcile the grand canyon of cognitive dissonance I feel when people with much more important jobs than I have manage to score much lengthier times off?

We've never been people that go around and confront people that have been financially successful and say, 'We hate you. We envy you because of how well you're doing.'

Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an 'ethic.'

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

I wish I were brave, although I try. I work too hard and don't play enough. Too much work ethic, not enough 'fun'.

I used to be so angry about the kids that had stuff. Like the kids that had cars, the kids that had money to go get lunch every day off campus. I used to feel so slighted.

I don't want to bust my butt for the rest of my life, like my parents.

I know why they don't like me because they want the money I have.

I work too hard and don't play enough.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn't get there.

You [a country] cannot be rich, successful and powerful and still be loved, particularly be those who have little success, wealth or power.

If the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands.

Workin' so hard every night and day and now we get to lay back.

Work hard, play hard.

I'm a workaholic because I love to play, if that makes sense.

there is undoubtedly something irritating about the favorites of fortune.

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to suchI have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,--work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.

And yet without labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable.

Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.

Familiarity breeds contempt. By bringing them in close, they realize that you’re just as human as they are. That’s when the madness sets in. They can’t understand why you have more than they do when you’re just a regular human being the same as them. Then they hate you for it. (Leta)

There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much.

Base natures ever judge a thing above them, and hate a power they are too much obliged to.

At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.'

The higher you ascend, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But most of all they hate those who fly.