I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

I’d done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

I worked at the Steel Company Of Wales when I was 17. My job was to supply tools to the guys working the blast furnaces.

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

If you get an opportunity to work with David Simon, anybody with good taste would.

I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.

I’m the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it’s still about the work.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

Work is making a living out of being bored.

It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.

The history of science is rich in example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more.

The time to worrying about flying is when you’re on the ground. When you’re up in the air, it’s too late. No point in worrying about it then.

We do not wish to enter Heaven until our work is done, for it would make us uneasy if there were one single soul left to be saved by our means.

Most people don’t like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

I always had a sense of discipline in me. However, there was a time when I couldn’t divide my time properly between off-field things and on-field assignments. The focus would be missing at times, and that would affect my preparation for matches. I managed to change that.

Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

I will never retire unless I have to.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

If I’d known how much packing I’d have to do, I’d have run again.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

From infancy, I have relied on the fiercely sweet spirits of black men; and this is abundantly clear in my work.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

I don’t do research. I never have.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

We have to build the capacity of our institutions, employees and workers. Our regulatory environment has not been encouraging to research, innovation and enterprise.

Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.

I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.

When you campaign and have to participate in so many debates just to the win the nomination of your party, you’ve had a lot of practice. You get to figure out as you go from one debate to another where you made your mistakes. By the time you get to the big debate you’re pretty polished.