work-life balance quotes

Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you possibly can while you still have your daytime job.

I love being busy.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.

If you’re working 50 hours a week to try to maintain family income, and your children have the kinds of aspirations that come from being flooded with television from age one, and associations have declined, people end up hopeless, even though they have every option.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

Work ends up dehumanizing people.

Most employees only want to know how much they get paid and how much time off they get – they probably don’t have the mission in their souls.

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.

It’s a small percentage of people who do the 80-hour-a-week high-powered career thing, and they’re almost all men. Why? Well, men are driven by socio-economic status more than women.

Every once in a while I get the highly inappropriate proposal which is like, ‚Wow, Really! You don’t even know me and I don’t know you at all, and you want that to happen? Tonight? Ok, I get off work at 7.30.‘

Have fun in your command. Don’t always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you’ve earned it, spend time with your families.

I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort – I think it keeps you going.

Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I had jobs that I loved. I worked in city government. I ran a youth organization. I served as an associate dean at a university. And I couldn’t imagine how a baby would fit into all of that.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

When I’m in meetings until 5am and then have to get up two hours later for filming, sometimes I ask myself ‚why?‘

I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

The pay is good and I can walk to work.

I do think coaches need to get away from the game more, though. It’s good for them.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

Moderation is the key so I work certain amount of time and then I take a certain amount of time off.

Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.

‚9 to 5,‘ that little song, that little story, just won’t ever end. Just like ‚I Will Always Love You,‘ it just keeps comin‘ back, popping up its head in one way or another.

If you want to occupy the C-suite or the top one-tenth of 1% in any organization, you have to be obsessively devoted to your career at the expense of everything else. And women look at that, and they think, ‚No.‘

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

I love travelling full stop – so while I’ve had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you’re travelling – not when you’re chained to your desk.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

I’m not an employee who goes to the office every morning at the same time. Then, vacations are needed.

I don’t do meetings.

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

I just don’t believe in the basic concept that someone should make their whole career in public service.

He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves.

I don’t know what’s better gettin‘ laid or gettin‘ paid.

A lot of people don’t enjoy their jobs, and it’s one of the main things we like to complain about.

Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

I first found delight in the Sabbath many years ago when, as a busy surgeon, I knew that the Sabbath became a day for personal healing. By the end of each week, my hands were sore from repeatedly scrubbing them with soap, water, and a bristle brush. I also needed a breather from the burden of a demanding profession.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

I don’t sleep much. I don’t sleep much – I work, I work, I work.

I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it.

I’m definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working – if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato vines in Sardinia or northern Italy.

Starting your own business isn’t just a job – it’s a way of life.

I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship – and you know what, a father does, too. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‚Mad Men‘ episode.