#labour

This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people’s convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that ‘they’ will never allow him to do this, that, and the other. Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union. I was told immediately that ‘they’ would never allow it. Who were ‘they’? I asked. Nobody seemed to know, but evidently ‘they’ were omnipotent. ↗

— George Orwell

#labour #servility #trade-unions #wage-labour #working-class

La femme ne peut être émancipée que lorsqu'elle prend part dans une grande mesure sociale à la production et n'est plus réclamée par le travail domestique que dans une mesure insignifiante. ↗

— Engels Friedrich

#gender-equality #labour #production #equality

In individual industries where female labour pays an important role, any movement advocating better wages, shorter working hours, etc., would not be doomed from the start because of the attitude of those women workers who are not organized. ↗

— Clara Zetkin

#any #attitude #because #better #doomed

An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. ↗

— William Kingdon Clifford

#atmosphere #been #beliefs #breathe #circumstances

I said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly or humane man. ↗

— Fanny Kemble

#any #chastisement #corporal #endure #female

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed. ↗

— Alfred North Whitehead

#alone #ambition #best #employed #enjoyed

I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party. ↗

— Vivienne Westwood

#am #because #conservative #considered #i

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph. ↗

— William Butler Yeats

#knows #labours #obstacles #overcomes #triumph

It's a very good idea that we have a third term Labour government led by Tony Blair for a full term. ↗

— Peter Mandelson

#full #good #good idea #government #idea

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labour in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour. ↗

— Frederic Raphael

#criticizes #does #grapes #his #labour