David Ben-Gurion Quotes

"Work" does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.

There’s no shame about any honest calling; don’t be afraid of soiling your hands, there’s plenty of soap to be had.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

My first experience with the creative was mopping tar. If you let the tar sit, it can get cold pretty quickly. And because the mops are so heavy, you've got to dip it and then ride it really fast.

Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.

When I was in Chicago, I was working as a carpenter while I was doing plays. I thought it'd be a fun set construction job, but it turned up to just be a straight-up factory.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

I was one who liked to work with my hands as well as my brain.

There is no surer token of a little mind than to imagine that anything in the way of physical labor is dishonoring.

Leaving a lot of movie sets, I've gone home and said, 'How come my hands are clean?' I should finish something and go home with dirt in my fingernails, because then you really feel that you've done something.

Labor, in itself, is neither elevating or otherwise. It is the laborer's privilege to ennoble his work by the aim with which he undertakes it, and by the enthusiasm and faithfulness he puts into it.

For me the meaning of my work is much more fluid.

It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall he worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do … Nothing should be made by man's labor which is not worth making; or which must be made by labor degrading to the makers

Creative work and critical thought, which produces new knowledge, can't be conditioned; indeed, conditioning prevents these things from ever happening.

Everything becomes creative if the person doing the job is

When I stepped from hard manual work to writing, I just stepped from one kind of hard work to another.

In my career, fun becomes a big factor. If something feels like it's going to be creative and be fun - follow your bliss. Is this where the juice is? Then I go there.

There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; alwayswe are invited to work.

All my experiments in Ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body.

Labor is no disgrace.

Art is when we do work that matters in a creative way, in a way that touches (people) and changes them for the better.

Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.

I never liked to work, I mean manual work.

It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.

Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work.