Work Ethic Quotes

Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do but you suck it up and do it anyway, and that's what teaches you humility, work ethic, responsibility, and follow-through.

~ Julie Lythcott-Haims

I've met actors where you think, if only you could just clean up your act and get it together, people would want to work with you. Some people are so difficult, it's just not worth working with them.

~ Patrick Stewart

Respect can only be given to those who have earned it by working for it.

~ Habeeb Akande

30 or 40 of such voluntary gentlemen would do more in a day than 100 of the rest that must be press'd to it by compulsion.

~ John Smith

How easy it is to slip.How hard it is to climb.How wise it is to keep in stepAnd never fall behind.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

If it comes easy, it will go fast.

~ Andrena Sawyer

You can’t say ‘Oh my stars.’ ‘Oh my stars’ is not a thing, and it makes no sense. The whole point of that saying is that you’re calling out to someone for help, and stars are not ‘someone,’ and certainly not capable of helping.” The words were out and gone before I realized what was happening. Grace just stared back at me, and I wanted so badly to shake the girl and make her realize that life couldn’t be all overalls and pink rain boots and guardian stars. I wanted to make her realize that sometimes you had to work.

~ Natalie Bina

if one characteristic of Lyndon Johnson was a boundless ambition, another was a willingness, on behalf of that ambition, to make efforts that were also without bounds.

~ Robert A. Caro

You always need to work hard. You always need to be willing to work hard. Not everything will be hard, but you should, at the very least, be willing to work hard.

~ Tom Giaquinto

Even though your time on the job is temporary, if you do a good enough job, your work there will last forever.

~ Idowu Koyenikan

It is extremely difficult to obtain a hearing from men living in democracies, unless it be to speak to them of themselves. They do not attend to the things said to them, because they are always fully engrossed with the things they are doing. For indeed few men are idle in democratic nations; life is passed in the midst of noise and excitement, and men are so engaged in acting that little remains to them for thinking. I would especially remark that they are not only employed, but that they are passionately devoted to their employments. They are always in action, and each of their actions absorbs their faculties: the zeal which they display in business puts out the enthusiasm they might otherwise entertain for idea.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

I guess what I'm sayin' is, if you want to give Jules a job, be very careful.” “Why be careful?” Marnes asked.Marck gazed up at the confusion of pipes and wires overhead.“'Cause she'll damn well do it. Even if you don't really expect her to.

~ Hugh Howey

A good work ethic is not so much a concern for hard work but rather one for responsibility. There have been a great many men and women who have in fact used work or hustle or selfish ambition as an escape from real responsibility, an escape from purpose. In matters such as these, the hard worker is just as dysfunctional as the sloth.

~ Criss Jami

Our shortcomings drive us, motivate us – to work harder or realize another purpose/talent.

~ Aaron B. Powell

We don't give up, even when things are bad.We pay our debts.We work hard.We act decently.We help our neighbours if they need it.We do what we say we will do.We don't want much attention.We look after our own.We are proud of what we do.We try to be quietly smart.We take chances sometimes to get on.We will fail sometimes.We will be affected by the wider world...But we hold on to who we are.

~ James Rebanks

You think of killing himon the spotbut discard that thought andleave,down into the urine-stinkingelevator, they have you crucified too, America at work, where they rip out your intestinesand your brain and your will and your spirit. They suck you dry, then throw you away. The capitalist system. The work ethic. The profit motive. The memory of your father’s words,“work hard and you’ll be appreciated.” of course, only if you make much more for them than they payyou.

~ Charles Bukowski

It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Teachers who complain 'These kids have no work ethic' couldn't be farther off the mark. The problem is not that these kids lack a work ethic; the problem is that some of them see no connection between a work ethic and school. None of them would think, for example, to say to a customer at the MacDonald's drive-up window, 'Do you think I could get you those Chicken McNuggets some time tomorrow?' Yet we give sanction to that sort of request when it comes to school assignments.

~ Garret Keizer

It couldn’t last. Everyone was just killing time. But if all they did was kill time, time would end up killing them.

~ Michael Grant

The routines of almost all famous writers, from Charles Darwin to John Grisham, similarly emphasise specific starting times, or number of hours worked, or words written. Such rituals provide a structure to work in, whether or not the feeling of motivation or inspiration happens to be present. They let people work alongside negative or positive emotions, instead of getting distracted by the effort of cultivating only positive ones. ‘Inspiration is for amateurs,’ the artist Chuck Close once memorably observed. ‘The rest of us just show up and get to work.

~ Oliver Burkeman

Whatever you do, be sure to do it well.

~ Andrena Sawyer

The problem would not exist if I asked beforehand. Hence, it is vital to ask honest questions (even if it sounds stupid) rather than making assumptions. Everybody makes mistakes; the good news is that everything can be fixed.

~ Anna Agoncillo

If you are not working towards something, your life will end with nothing.

~ Habeeb Akande

It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by 'new at it,' I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction.

~ Louis C.k.

It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by 'new at it,' I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction ... Give it a minute.

~ Louis Ck

Sometimes we just have to suck it up and do what we have to do, until we are able to do what we want to do.

~ Mark W. Boyer

When you've earned something, I mean really earned it, no one can make you doubt that you deserve it. They can't say it isn't yours. There's something about getting a thing that you've bled and fought for that makes the getting that much sweeter.

~ Rachael Allen

It's absurd to be upset by a lack of results when the cause is a lack of activity.

~ Orrin Woodward

Someday, I suppose I’ll give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I’ll probably be rocking fast, because I don’t know what I’ll do without a job.

~ Pat Summitt

Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed.

~ Tahir Shah

If you want to know the real reasons behind that attitude, think of the thought behind that attitude

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Do the work in your unique style.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

You can't expect to reap a harvest that you're not willing to plant.

~ Yvonne Pierre

Hard work makes you feel good because you have accomplished something.

~ Alcurtis Turner

Sheer effort enables those with nothing to surpass those with privilege and position.

~ Toyotomi Hideyoshi

I had a dream that I would be successful and happy in life…I woke up running out of breath, because I’ve been chasing this dream for quite a while now.

~ Starley Ard

Cyrilly expected Sylvia – as an intelligent and ambitious young woman – to walk around pale-mouthed and flat-shoed. She saw intellectual inclinations and a taste for fashion as mutually exclusive and assumed that Sylvia would not mind missing fashion shows to work late in the office.

~ Elizabeth Winder

Speaking less and doing more says more.

~ Kayambila Mpulamasaka

You get what you work for.

~ Mark Boyer

The harder I work, the luckier I get.

~ Samuel Goldwyn