In Labour Quotes

#1. Part of the reason I am so evangelical in our campaigning work is that I had an unshakeable faith in Labour values, but we needed a machine worthy of the message. I grew up with a peerless Conservative machine, with vastly superior resources.

Douglas Alexander

#2. Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
(Mountains are in labour, a ridiculous mouse will be born)

Horace

#3. The mountains are in labour, the birth will be an absurd little mouse.

Horace

#4. Making a cartoon occupied usually about three full days, two spent in labour and one in removing the appearance of labour.

David Low

#5. But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.

Alfred Marshall

#6. I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.

Winston Churchill

#7. We need a good strong opposition and I don't know whether it's any coincidence that we need Angela Eagle in Labour and we need Theresa May to lead the Conservative party, both of whom of course are women.

Anna Soubry

#8. A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse.

Jean De La Fontaine

#9. The Bolshevists would blow up the fabric with high explosive, with horror. Others would pull down with the crowbars and with cranks
especially with cranks ... Sweating, slums, the sense of semi-slavery in labour, must go. We must cultivate a sense of manhood by treating men as men.

David Lloyd George

#10. Barbara Castle was a hero to millions of British women. She inspired a new generation of women to become active in Labour politics, including, of course Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman.

Patricia Hewitt

#11. The Labour Party in 2011 was in an exceptionally bad place. We'd been hammered in an election. We didn't see the scale of it coming.

Johann Lamont

#12. The birds are the saints, who fly to heaven on the wings of contemplation, who are so removed from the world that they have no business on earth. They do not labour, but by contemplation alone they already live in heaven.

Anthony Of Padua

#13. In a way I'm almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair.

Robert Harris

#14. What the new government of Nigeria and other African governments must do, is to start a massive reorientation campaign in the culture of the dignity of labour.

Sunday Adelaja

#15. The first of all commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products.

Henry Charles Carey

#16. Specialisation encouraged innovation, because it encouraged the investment of time in a tool-making tool. That saved time, and prosperity is simply time saved, which is proportional to the division of labour.

Matt Ridley

#17. I don't vote. I voted Labour once, in that moment of euphoria. I know that if people only made a voice for change, then change will happen, but I'm not that person. I'm painting pictures.

Gary Hume

#18. What happens in Bermondsey on February 24th will be a pointer to the rest of the country as far as Labour's prospects are concerned.

Peter Tatchell

#19. I have never been in favour of expelling people from the Labour Party.

Michael Foot

#20. When it comes to getting more women into parliament, politicians have at least started to take active measures. The British Labour Party introduced all-female shortlists in 1997.

Noreena Hertz

#21. The anointing is what enables us to labour, without having to apply any special effort. The anointing is what overcomes every difficulty that would beset us, that we in our own strength and with our own abilities would normally not be able to cope with.

Sunday Adelaja

#22. Singles needed to come back. And what I tried to do in my online experiment was to change the rules for myself and make available at a more regular pace the fruits of my labour, for people who decided they wanted to support my recordings.

Todd Rundgren

#23. There is only one hope for mankind - and that is democratic socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it - and that is the Labour Party.

Aneurin Bevan

#24. I've been in the Labour Party 50 years and it's 40-odd since I was elected to Parliament

Roy Hattersley

#25. While the women of the older generation were thankful if only they succeeded in obtaining 'a work and a duty,' however monotonous and wearing it might be, the will of the younger generation for a pleasurable labour has fortunately increased.

Ellen Key

#26. The most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.

Jonathan Swift

#27. In Scotland, the indication is that for the Westminster elections at least, Labour voters are satisfied with their government.

Lucy Powell

#28. In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.

Adam Smith

#29. Of course the town fed off all the sweat and labour of the miners and the poor selectors on the plains below but in those grand stone buildings they could bankrupt or hang you as they pleased.

Peter Carey

#30. It is more important for Labour to raise the reputation of politics than for the Tories, who are only in politics for the money.

Frank Dobson

#31. An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.

Karl Marx

#32. Our recent 5-year labour agreements, in Canada as well as the United States, are based upon experience, logic and principle rather than on pressure, propaganda and force.

Charles E. Wilson

#33. What the deuse do we men go to school for? If our wits were equal to women's, we might spare much time and pains in our education: for nature teaches your sex, what, in a long course of labour and study, ours can hardly attain to.

Samuel Richardson

#34. We have an extreme rightwing government in this country, although it's called the Labour government.

John Pilger

#35. All my experiments in Ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body.

Mahatma Gandhi

#36. So there clearly is a sense in which the Labour Party here, certainly at State level is reaching out and connecting with people and reflecting the aspirations and needs of, you know the mass of ordinary Australians.

Patricia Hewitt

#37. The National Socialist state refuses to admit female labour in factories merely because such labour is cheap. There is, of course, a certain amount of industrial work which can only be performed by women, but an essential condition is that this sort of work should not be injurious to health.

Adolf Hitler

#38. To seek these things is lost labour; Geese in an oyle pot, fat Hogs among Jews, and Wine in a fishing net.

George Herbert

#39. I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.

Tony Benn

#40. 22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not.

Anonymous

#41. As you know, the Australian Labour Party is committed to turning the country into a republic. We've not stipulated a timeline for doing that. We are sensitive to the other priorities we've got as a nation and in the world, but in time the country will head in that direction.

Kevin Rudd

#42. It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour.

Gottfried Leibniz

#43. It goes without saying that the desire to accomplish the task with more confidence, to avoid wasting time and labour, and to spare our experimental animals as much as possible, made us strictly observe all the precautions taken by surgeons in respect to their patients.

Ivan Pavlov

#44. We must ensure that while eliminating child labor in the export industry, we are also eliminating their labour from the informal sector, which is more invisible to public scrutiny - and thus leaves the children more open to abuse and exploitation.

Carol Bellamy

#45. The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times.

David Harvey

#46. When New Labour came to power, we got a Right-wing Conservative government. I came to realise that voting Labour wasn't in Scotland's interests any more. Any doubt I had about that was cast aside for ever when I saw Gordon Brown cosying up to Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.

Jimmy Reid

#47. The natural consequence of our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to compelling the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening of labour, and the export of the labourer.

Henry Charles Carey

#48. DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work.

Peter Ackroyd

#49. even in the quieter professions, there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves a man's looks to the natural effect of time.

Jane Austen

#50. Why, the wrong is but a wrong i'th'world; and having the world for your labour, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it a right.

William Shakespeare

#51. Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labour; its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.

Ludwig Von Mises

#52. You must labour to acquire that great and uncommon talent of hating with good breeding, and loving with prudence; to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger; and no friendship dangerous, in care it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and unreserved confidence.

Lord Chesterfield

#53. Politics is tricky, especially in Jamaica. There are two parties, JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] and PNP [People's National Party], and if I went for one, I would upset supporters of the other. I stay as far from politics as I can.

Usain Bolt

#54. What man's labour cannot do in ten years, GOD's favour can settle it in ten seconds.

Osunsakin Adewale

#55. A majority of all defectors who voted Labour in 2010 but for a different party in 2015 said Ed Miliband had helped push them to another party. For those switching to the Tories, the second biggest reason was the fear that a Labour government would spend and borrow too much.

Michael Ashcroft

#56. I'm sick and tired of government ministers in this Labour government who simply blame other people when things go wrong.

Theresa May

#57. The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

Colleen McCullough

#58. I shall not rest until, once again, the destinies of our people and our party are joined together again in victory at the next general election Labour in its rightful place in government again.

Tony Blair

#59. Acting was merely a pastime; I wanted to make films. But theatre, ah - now that was a labour of love. Can there be anything better than performing without retakes and cuts, in front of people you can see, hearing them breathe in the darkness of the hall?

Kabir Bedi

#60. People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.

Tony Blair

#61. I set myself one task, which was to get Labour on to the front foot, back in the game, making the weather on the economy, and that's going to take me a year.

Ed Balls

#62. The optimism that many felt in the 1960s over labour-saving technology is giving way to a fearful question: 'Will your labour be good for anything in the future? Or will you be replaced by a machine?'

Peter Thiel

#63. private philanthropy is no substitution for hard-fought battles over labour laws and social security, in part because philanthropy can be retracted on a whim, while elected officials, at least in theory, have citizens to answer to.

Linsey McGoey

#64. The whole result of continued labour is not often consumed and enjoyed in a moment; the result generally lasts for a certain length of time. We must then conceive the capital as being progressively uninvested.

William Stanley Jevons

#65. Life is beyond hunting. And the Labour of gathering. It's all about love in the light of Life.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#66. It is beyond belief that someone could come to the launch of a report on antisemitism in the Labour Party and espouse such vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people.

Ruth Smeeth

#67. Language is metaphor in the sense that it not only stores but translates experience from one mode into another. Money is metaphor in the sense that it stores skill and labour and also translates one skill into another.

Marshall McLuhan

#68. I believe the prayers of 30 years ago are not lost. We may not see the results of our labour or sacrifice immediately, but in due time they will produce much fruit.

T. B. Joshua

#69. We are precarious. Which is to say some good things (accumulation of diverse
knowledges, skills and abilities through work and life experiences in permanent
construction), and a lot of bad ones (vulnerability, insecurity, poverty, social
exposure).

Lisa Adkins

#70. Child labour may be distasteful to westerners, but does boycotting goods made with child labour improve or exacerbate the lot of third world children? Trusting the market to regulate may not ultimately be in our interest.

Noreena Hertz

#71. A convention was drawn up on June 17, 1925, in which the principle of supervision, as opposed to that of simple propaganda, was recognized, thanks to the efforts of the labour members, of whom I was one.

Leon Jouhaux

#72. Following the rise of the Labour Party it seemed reasonable, in 1927, to expect, or at least hope, that co-operation for the common good might gradually replace the competitiveness of capitalism.

Dora Russell

#73. Once we begin to speak of men mixing their labour with the earth, we are in a whole world of new relations between man and nature, and to separate natural history from social history becomes extremely problematic.

Raymond Williams

#74. Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

Lewis Thomas

#75. The ability to expend energy, especially in the form of other people's labour, in non-utilitarian ways, is the most basic and universally understood symbol of power.

Bruce G. Trigger

#76. Every man, who proposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompense of labour, and that labour, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward.

Samuel Johnson

#77. I'm politically on the left, no question about it. I oppose sweatshops, I oppose exploitation of labour in the third world.

Norman Finkelstein

#78. Why play, lounge or labour in a social wasteland? It's toxicity is contagious, and no respecter of persons. Fall back!

T.F. Hodge

#79. We in the Labour party know better than most that opposition is the easy part. What's more difficult is governing and setting out an agenda for government.

Lucy Powell

#80. What is really desired, under the name of riches, is, essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for own own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to various ends.

John Ruskin

#81. We know, in Wales or in England - you simply can't trust Labour on the NHS. In England, we are delivering for patients while Labour just use the NHS as a political football. We won't let them; we'll always fight for the NHS.

Andrew Lansley

#82. Elections are also about the future - the pledges that we are making for this country. For those who care about equality and fairness in the UK, and beyond, Labour really is the only choice.

Anne Campbell

#83. Labour once spent has no influence on the future value of any article; it isgone and lost for ever. In commerce bygones are forever bygones; and we are alwaysstarting clearat each moment, judging the values of things with a view to future utility.

William Stanley Jevons

#84. In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.

Karl Marx

#85. That's the point. If these Labour MP's were really working men, they'd have some sense. But most of 'em, or at least the ones I've met, seem to be half-baked intellectuals who've specialized in economics or some such dreary muck.

Carter Dickson

#86. As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah , so the division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital .

Karl Marx

#87. Today, if you pay a[n US] dollar for a pound of apples in the supermarketm only about six cents covers the farmwork used to get it there; ( ... )

Tracie McMillan

#88. Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible.

Adam Smith

#89. We just have to be crystal clear that if we were to abandon all the reforms made over some very painful years in the Labour party, we would be consigned back to opposition.

Patricia Hewitt

#90. We in the Labour party owe it to the people we represent to make sure that we offer a choice at the next election between our Labour values and those of the Conservatives.

Lucy Powell

#91. Khadi work without the mastery of the science of khadi will be love's labour lost in terms of Swaraj.

Mahatma Gandhi

#92. It's estimated that there may be two hundred and fifty million children in the world engaged in some form of exploitative child labour.

Carol Bellamy

#93. In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.

Edward Gibbon

#94. I am in the Labour Party because I am a feminist. I am in the Labour Party because I believe in equality.

Harriet Harman

#95. Is anyone serious about the politics of happiness? David Cameron dipped a toe in the water, using the word lightly, but denying the hard policies it implies. Labour shies away from it, but should take up the challenge.

Polly Toynbee

#96. Without wishing in the slightest degree to disparage the skill and labour of breadmakers by trade, truth compels us to assert our conviction of the superior wholesomeness of bread made in our own homes.

Eliza Acton

#97. I am positive that I would see the end of child labour around the world in my lifetime, as the poorest of the poor have realised that education is a tool that can empower them.

Kailash Satyarthi

#98. More than 30 years ago, when I had embarked upon the fight against child labour, it was not even considered an issue worth any discussion. It was accepted as a way of life in India, much like it was in other countries. Today, no country or business or society can throw this issue away.

Kailash Satyarthi

#99. If I was to say what I am, I'd be a Labour man. I like Tony Blair a lot, I think he's a good man. And in America I'd definitely be a Democrat; I'd never be a Republican.

Elton John

#100. And it seems to me in that experience may lie at least some of the clues for policy development perhaps constitutional changes as well that Labour will need to make at the national level too.

Patricia Hewitt