Wendell Berry Quotes

Working from nine till five every day at something that gives you no pleasure just so that, after thirty years, you can retire.

There is a vast world of work out there in this country, where at least 111 million people are employed in this country alone - many of whom are bored out of their minds. All day long.

When you're coming from a place of living just to work, it's never as good as you want it to be. It's never as authentic.

That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe indictment of our organizations - not just business, but government service, the universities. These people don't find their jobs interesting.

If there’s any trick to doing a job you hate . . . Mrs. Clark says it’s to find a job you hate even more.

Work is no longer challenging.

Whether you're a mechanic or you build houses or you work in an office, you don't have to like your boss.

Work is an activity that is financially-driven or one that you'd like to do less of.

I worked as a parking lot attendant for a while and a delivery boy and two or three other things, but none of them seemed just right.

Wishing of all employments is the worst.

A woman at the Limited once asked me, 'Why do you work?' She said, 'You made a lot of money as a young man, so why are you still working?' I had never thought about it before. Forced to consider it, I told her, 'You know why? Because I think that if you stop to smell the roses, you'll get hit by a truck.'

I had, like, 11 jobs. I've been fired 11 times! 'Cause I'm not cut for that. You know, I was a great employee, man. Everybody loved me coming to work - I'm singing, tellin' jokes on the assembly line. I was miserable, man. I was dying. I was dying.

I know that I'm in the minority to be able to keep working all these years. But I want more!

I love acting, but I am a mom, and the roles just weren't coming because of a mixture of things: because I'm not ambitious, and because I'm older, and I had a baby. I really felt like I had said a graceful and completely happy goodbye to acting in a significant way. And I had sort of made my peace with that.

I hate the school of thought that says work is work and that you have to be unhappy at work because that's what work is. I totally respect the fact that not everyone has the choices that I have, and that some people have to work jobs that they don't like because they don't have any other options.

I'd rather be dead than work in a warehouse.

I grew up thinking that corporate America was my destination. Then I got there, and I was making the money I wanted to make, but I just wasn't happy.

I usually hate most of my work: probably at least more than half of it.

It is an immeasurable tragedy to spend a sizeable portion of one's waking hours doing a job that does not excite you nor infuse you with a sense of purpose.

I'll know when to retire when I don't want to push myself anymore.

I don't have any ambitions. I am looking forward to retiring, or at least having more time. When I was young I wanted more stuff, now I am older, I want more time.

I don't want to retire before the tournament starts for me.

The first time in my career I thought it makes no sense anymore, that I'll retire.

If I'm not doing the work I want, I usually suffer a psychological allergic reaction and get ill.