Selected employment quotes

1. I believe the stars can affect human lives, particularly by providing employment for thousands of astrologers.

2. American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors.

3. I eventually became the king ruler of the pear-packing plant.

4. Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

5. This 21st century economy holds great promise for our people. But unless we give all Americans the skills they need to succeed, countries like India and China will take good-paying jobs that should be ours.

6. After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.

7. Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

8. Crime, family dissolution, welfare, and low levels of social organization are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work.

9. The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

10. Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation.

11. There may be few instances in which the superstition that only measurable magnitudes can be important has done positive harm in the economic field: but the present inflation and employment problems are a very serious one.

12. The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them.

13. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and, as cooks go, she went.

14. I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears so much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

15. I have... instituted systematic, voluntary measures of cooperation with the business institutions and with State and municipal authorities to make certain that fundamental businesses of the country shall continue as usual, that wages and therefore consuming power shall not be reduced, and that a special effort shall be made to expand construction work in order to assist in equalizing other deficits in employment... I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented. Agricultural prices have reflected the returning confidence. The measures taken must be vigorously pursued until normal conditions are restored.

16. The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment... has no place in the gospel of American progress.

17. Firing employees, that's unfortunately a part of doing business. [1]

18. A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery. Our study clearly shows that employers would rather not hire a lot of workers from the inner city. They feel people from the inner city are not job-ready, that the kids have been poorly educated, that they can't read, they can't write, they can't speak.

19. But until we come up with certain guarantees - for example, guaranteed jobs where mothers move off welfare - I support welfare very strongly.

20. Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism-ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.

21. It is no part of the functions of the National Government to find employment for the people, and if we were to appropriate a hundred millions for his purpose, we should only be taxing 40 millions of people to keep a few thousand employed.

22. Our study clearly shows that employers would rather not hire a lot of workers from the inner city. They feel people from the inner city are not job-ready, that the kids have been poorly educated, that they can't read, they can't write, they can't speak.

23. If there is a job that a Democrat can't do, then abolish the job.

24. 'A word of advice: 'get a job.''

25. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village-in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed and needed badly-the man who can 'Carry a Message to Garcia.'

26. I believe in producers, creaters, manufacturers, distributors, and in all industrial workers of the world who have a job, and hold it down.

27. The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claims of a multitude of graduates from schools and universities. This army of scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated. They hanker for the scribe's golden age, for a return to something like the scribe-dominated societies of ancient Egypt, China, and Europe of the Middle Ages. There is little doubt that the present trend in the new and renovated countries toward social regimentation stems partly from the need to create adequate employment for a large number of scribes. And since the tempo of the production of the literate is continually increasing, the prospect is of ever-swelling bureaucracies.

28. 'I've got black friends, I employ black people. I don't employ them because they are black; I employ them because they're the best people who applied for the cotton-picking job.'

29. Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man choose them for employment; for certainly you were better take for business, a man somewhat absurd, than over-formal.

30. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?

31. Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody who can find work to be able to find work.

32. Wages have increased, the cost of living has decreased. The job of every man and woman has been made more secure. We have in this short period decreased the fear of poverty, the fear of unemployment, the fear of old age; and these fears that are the greatest calamities of human kind.

33. In Hollywood, you're a veteran if you've had a job of more than six weeks' tenure with one company.

34. Government . . . was not founded to create jobs. Create your own job. Be an individual.

35. Geraldine: I've no idea who my father was. Prentice: I'd better be frank, Miss Barclay. I can't employ you if you're in any way miraculous. It would be contrary to established practice. You did have a father? Geraldine: Oh, I'm sure I did. My mother was frugal in her habits, but she'd never economize unwisely.

36. Mrs. Prentice: Are you Geraldine Barclay? Nick: Yes. Mrs. Prentice: Where have you been? Nick: I've been attending to the thousand and one duties that occupy the average secretary during her working hours. Mrs Prentice: It doesn't take the whole morning to file your nails, surely? Nick: I had to lie down. I was sick. Mrs. Prentice: Are you pregnant? Nick: I can't discuss my employer's business with you.

37. Hitler also anticipated modern economic policy . . . by recognizing that a rapid approach to full employment was only possible if it was combined with wage and price controls. That a nation oppressed by economic fear would respond to Hitler as Americans did to F.D.R. is not surprising.

38. I am very interested in social developments in America. I believe that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path. We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known. Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back, and this cannot be left to private initiative. It is the government that must tackle the problem.

39. Neither of us ever actually held a job in our lives.

40. Don't you think that's the way to persuade more companies to come to this region and get more jobs-because I want them-for the people who are unemployed. Not always standing there as moaning minnies. Now stop it!

41. 'The young people will think that begging is okay and if you are finding difficulties you can just go on the streets and beg.'

42. Now, if your boss is a sadist, then you have a big problem. In that case, fire your boss and get a new job.

43. McJob : A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.

44. Nobody has ever been happy in a job they obtained by first handing in a resume.

45. Life is dull, but it could be worse and it could be better. We accept that a corporation determines our life's routines. It's the trade-off so that we don't have to be chronically unemployed creative types, and we know it. When we were younger, we'd at least make a show of not being fooled and leave copies of Adbusters on our desktops. After a few years it just doesn't matter. You trawl for jokes or amusingly diversionary .wav files. You download music. A new project comes along, then endures a slow-motion smothering at the hands of meetings. All ideas feel stillborn. The air smells like five hundred sheets of paper.

46. Il est plus facile de paraitre digne des emplois qu'on n'a pas que de ceux que l'on exerce.

47. I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

48. Theodore H. White tells a remarkable story about Goldwater's chief speechwriter, Karl Hess. Chief speechwriters of losing campaigns usually find a safe berth somewhere in the party machine, but not so Hess. First, he applied for positions with conservative senators and congressmen-the very politicians who had been cheering him on a few months before. Unwanted, he lowered his sights dramatically. Could he perhaps work the elevators in the Senate or the House? Still no luck. The apostle of the free market was reduced to the ranks of the unemployed. He enrolled in a night-school course in welding and eventually found a job working the night shift in a machine shop.

49. I felt alienated by the experience and decided to stay away from corporate employment.

50. I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.

51. I was fired from my television job, simple as that. Well, downsized, really, a classic 1990s situation.

52. The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.

53. Tomorrow, the entire ANC leadership and I will be back at our desks. We are rolling up our sleeves to begin tackling the problems our country faces. We ask you all to join us - go back to your jobs in the morning. Let's get South Africa working. For we must, together and without delay, begin to build a better life for all South Africans. This means creating jobs building houses, providing education and bringing peace and security for all.

54. Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim that we have a choice between cutting tax and cutting unemployment, for the two go hand in hand.

55. 'When we leave out people on the grounds of ethnicity we limit our options. As such, we become poorer because we are not making optimum use of our human resources, thereby depriving us of the returns and full benefit of our capabilities.'

56. Good morning, Mr. Greenspan. I understand that you did not take my friendly advice last fall. I thought maybe you should look for other employment, but I see you have kept your job.

57. 'But what can I do?' cried she, spreading out her arms helplessly. 'I can not hew down trees, as my father used; and in all this end of the king's domain there is nothing else to be done. For there are so many shepherds that no more are needed, and so many tillers of the soil that no more can find employment. Ah, I have tried; hut no one wants a weak girl like me.' 'Why don't you become a witch?' asked the man. 'Me!' gasped Mary-Marie, amazed. 'A witch!' 'Why not?' he inquired, as if surprised. 'Well,' said the girl, laughing. 'I'm not old enough. Witches, you know, are withered dried-up old hags.' 'Oh, not at all!' returned the stranger. 'And they sell their souls to Satan, in return for a knowledge of witchcraft,' continued Mary-Marie more seriously. 'Stuff and nonsense!' cried the stranger angrily. 'And all the enjoyment they get in life is riding broomsticks through the air on dark nights,' declared the girl. 'Well, well, well!' said the old man in an astonished tone. 'One might think you knew all about witches, to hear you chatter. But your words prove you to be very ignorant of the subject. You may find good people and bad people in the world; and so, I suppose, you may find good witches and bad witches. But I must confess most of the witches I have known were very respectable, indeed, and famous for their kind actions.' 'Oh. I'd like to be that kind of witch!' said Mary-Marie, clasping her hands earnestly.

58. You're fired!