Unseen Labor Quotes

Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.

Me being an artist working with dancers and seeing how hard they work, they are the first to show up and the last to leave. They work just as hard, if not harder, than me - and they never get credit for it.

Housework is what a woman does that nobody notices unless she hasn't done it.

Specialization makes it easy to forget about the filth of the coal-fired power plant that is lighting this pristine computer screen, or the backbreaking labor it took to pick the strawberries for my cereal, or the misery of the hog that lived and died so I could enjoy my bacon.

The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.

No one knows how hard one works.

They say making laws is like making sausages. You shouldn't watch. It's the same for acting, especially for the actor who works unconsciously.

The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! - breathe dead hippo, so as to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don't you see? your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in - your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business.

If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them. That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like.

I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

Each doctor makes a much, much more important job than I do, but at the end, nobody talks about him. We all know about it, but we don't really think about it.

Much of the work of every life is done in the dark.

A movie is like a tip of an iceberg, in a way, because so little of what you do in connection with making a movie actually gets into the movie. Almost everything gets left behind.

I was always working; it's just that no one was paying attention.

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.

My life's work has been to prompt others and be forgotten. Remember that night when Christian came to your balcony? That moment sums up my life. While I was below in the shadows, others climbed up to kiss the sweet rose.

The translator ... Peculiar outcast, ghost in the world of literature, recreating in another form something already created, creating and not creating, writing words that are his own and not his own, writing a work not original to him, composing with utmost pains and without recognition of his pains or the fact that the composition really is his own.

My parents do a lot of things behind the scenes that go unnoticed.

The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.

In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity.

I can move, but I've never background-danced for anybody.

There's been a tremendous amount of work that's been done that you can't see in Columbia.

I think my darkest days were probably when I was catering. I would go to these parties and pass out hors d'oeuvres, and it's like you're invisible. I remember one catering captain told me that all you are is a tray that comes into their space for a moment and then you leave. It was one of the most depressing things I've ever been told.