Life

11 Patriotic Labor Day Quotes

by Chelsey Grasso
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There are quite a few holidays that provide the perfect opportunity to be patriotic, and Labor Day is one of them. If you need some help making the tie between Labor Day and patriotism, these 11 patriotic Labor Day quotes will help clear things up for you. From Abraham Lincoln to Bruce Lee, the authors of these quotes know what it means to be an American just as well as they know what it means to work hard, making them the perfect people to voice their opinions on Labor Day.

Americans are hard workers, and they always have been. In fact, as it turns out, Americans work more than anyone, taking fewer vacations days, working longer hours, and retiring later in life than the English, the French, the Germans, the Norwegians, and the Japanese. Working hard isn't just something you need to do to get by in America, it's something that defines being an American.

Labor Day is all about celebrating the social and economic hurdles that we've crossed as both individuals and as a country through the labor movement, and everything that's followed it. When you really take a second to ingest all of that, Labor Day is a holiday that allows you to take a day off from the very thing it's celebrating.

1. "If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool." ― Abraham Lincoln

2. "Labor Day is seen as a day of rest for many hardworking Americans." — James P. Hoffa

3. "Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased." — Adam Smith

4. "Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live." ― Criss Jami

5. "If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." — Bruce Lee

6. "A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil." — Grover Cleveland

7. "I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good." — Oprah Winfrey

8. "The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses — behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights." — Muhammad Ali

9. "Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work toward them every day, will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor." — Brian Tracy

10. "I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living." — John D. Rockefeller

11. "Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation." — Samuel Gompers

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