31 May 2009

Some quotes on work...

...and why it's not, nor should be, everything people think it is.

"I could not respect how he functioned so completely immersed in the structures of his professional micro-universe...I saw that in this constant striving to realize a financial future, no thought was given to the critical personal and political issues that affect one's emotional present."

from The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

"If you work full time for someone, then that's all your hours gone, used up and sold in advance."

"You have nothing to bargain with your employer, except to ask for more money for the same amount of time."

"When you work as an independent, you can make a different calculation - more money might not be better if it used up too much time, or if it meant doing something you disliked."

from 'Enough' by John Naish

"Why are we all so desperate for jobs, anyway? They're horrible things."

"The idea of the 'job' as the answer to all woes, individual and social, is one of the most pernicious myths of modern society."

"The terrible irony is that when our current job turns out to provide neither much money nor much fun, we think we can solve the problem by getting a better job."

"It is your patriotic duty to work hard - another myth, particularly convenient to the rich, who, as Bertrand Russell said 'preach the dignity of labour, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect."

from How To Be Idle, by Tom Hodgkinson

"As if there was something romantic and glamorous about hard work...if there was something romantic about it, the Duke of Westminster would be digging his own fucking garden, wouldn't he?"

Jeffrey Bernard

I love writers.

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