Quotes about Work

Margo Channing: Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.

- Bette Davis (as Margo) in All About Eve (1950)

Adam Cook: I'm a concert pianist. That's a pretentious way of saying I'm... unemployed at the moment.

- Oscar Levant (as Adam Cook) in An American in Paris (1951)

Peggy Stephenson: Well, what have you been doing with yourself lately?
Fred Derry: Working.
Peggy Stephenson: Yes, Dad told me he heard you were in some kind of building work.
Fred Derry: Well, that's a hopeful way of putting it. I'm really in the junk business - an occupation for which many people feel I'm well-qualified by temperament and training.

- Dana Andrews (as Fred Derry) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Eliza Doolittle: I sold flowers; I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me, I'm not fit to sell anything else.

- Audrey Hepburn (as Eliza Doolittle) in My Fair Lady (1964)

Terry: Yeah his racket, everybody's got a racket.

- Marlon Brando (as Terry Malloy) in On the Waterfront (1954)

Clarence: Clarence Oddbody, AS2.
George Bailey: Oddbody... Hey, what's an AS2?
Clarence: Angel, Second Class.
[the bridgekeeper, overhearing it, falls backwards in his chair]

- Henry Travers (as Clarence) in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Secretary of Labor: The Department of Labor wishes to note that the workers of Freedonia are demanding shorter hours.
Rufus T. Firefly: Very well, we'll give them shorter hours. We'll start by cutting their lunch hour to 20 minutes.

- Groucho Marx (as Rufus T. Firefly) in Duck Soup (1933)

Dr. Alex Brulov: There's lots of happiness in working hard. Maybe the most.

- Michael Chekhov (as Dr. Alexander Brulov) in Spellbound (1945)

Margaret : Judge Turner is an Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court!
Richard Nugent: Good for you junior - better than working for a living!

- Cary Grant (as Dick) in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)

Alberto Beddini: I promised my dresses that I would take them to Venice and that you would be in them!

- Erik Rhodes (as Alberto Beddini) in Top Hat (1935)