The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Don't do what they ask you. Do what they ask you plus other insight.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

If you want to do your duty properly, you should do just a little more than that.

It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

In the field of ideas not involving productive activities it is easier to distinguish the division between material and spiritual necessity. For a long time man has been trying to free himself from alienation through culture and art. While he dies every day during the eight or more hours that he sells his labour, he comes to life afterwards in his spiritual activities. But this remedy bears the germs of the same sickness; it is as a solitary individual that he seeks communion with his environment.

Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as Jehovah your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor, and shall do all your work, And the seventh day shall be a sabbath to Jehovah your God. You shall not do any work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male slave, nor your female slave, nor your ox, nor your ass, nor any of your livestock, nor your stranger that is within your gates; so that your male slave and your female slave may rest like yourself. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm. On account of this Jehovah your God has commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own. Inaugural Address (20 January 1961)

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.

If we look at our work immediately after completing it, we are still too involved; if too long afterwards, we cannot pick up the thread again.

I know that many will call this useless work.

Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

I've always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don't do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.

I can never stop working hard. Each day I feel that I have to improve. Hard work…Determination…I gotta keep pushing myself.

It is warm work; and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment. But mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands. At the Battle of Copenhagen (2 April 1801)

I have no doubt that the Romans planned the time-table of their days far better than we do. They rose before the sun at all seasons. Except in wartime we never see the dawn. Sometimes we see sunset. The message of sunset is sadness; the message of dawn is hope. The rest and the spell of sleep in the middle of the day refresh the human frame far more than a long night. We were not made by Nature to work, or even play, from eight o’clock in the morning till midnight. We throw a strain upon our system which is unfair and improvident. For every purpose of business or pleasure, mental or physical, we ought to break our days and our marches into two.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.