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1 " Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one' own personality? "
― Antonio Gramsci
2 " A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules. "
― Eric Greitens , Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
3 " Of what use can our labour be, when the labours we record are in themselves entirely useless? "
4 " The work is plentiful but the labours are few. "
― Lailah Gifty Akita
5 " I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man , certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman Patricians by saying: That they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words; and experience has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. "
― Leonardo da Vinci , Leonardo's Notebooks
6 " Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift. which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man. is not so in the sight of our kind God. "
― William Blake , Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion
7 " There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, ... the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its solution must be obtained. By the labours of LaGrange, the motions of a disturbed planet are reduced with all their complication and variety to a purely mathematical question. It then ceases to be a physical problem; the disturbed and disturbing planet are alike vanished: the ideas of time and force are at an end; the very elements of the orbit have disappeared, or only exist as arbitrary characters in a mathematical formula. "
― George Boole
8 " A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men living and dead and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received. "
9 " If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy. "
