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A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man or woman who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether they be painter or ploughman.
George Bernard Shaw
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Everyone deserves fair compensation and rest for their labor, regardless of the type of work they do.

This quote by George Bernard Shaw emphasizes the importance of recognizing the value of work, no matter its nature. It asserts that all individuals, whether they engage in creative pursuits like painting or manual labor like farming, require adequate sustenance, rest, and leisure in return for their efforts, underlining the fundamental dignity of all forms of work.

Themes

WorkLaborRestDignityValue

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about workers' rights, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of fair pay and rest.

More from George Bernard Shaw

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
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Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
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Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
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Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
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Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
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The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
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Similar quotes

I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don't do anything. I just sort of have lunch - all day. I never have been able to stick to a schedule. I work when there is something due or when I am really excited about a piece.
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A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person.
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I'm not interested in doing work that doesn't captivate me.
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Our jobs determine to a large extent what our lives are like. Is what you do for a living making you ill? Does it keep you from becoming a more fully realized person? Do you feel ashamed of what you have to do at work? All too often, the answer to such questions is yes. Yet it does not have to be like that. Work can be one of the most joyful, most fulfilling aspects of life. Whether it will be or not depends on the actions we collectively take.
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My feeling about work is it's much more about the experience of doing it than the end product. Sometimes things that are really great and make lots of money are miserable to make, and vice versa.
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I like the job. That's what I'll miss the most... I'm not sure anybody ever liked this as much as I've liked it.
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