This section lists
short citations (5 to 10 lines each) about ethics, spirituality and work, from people in diverse fields (philosophers, scientists, leaders, CEOs, poets, religious figures, etc...). These quotes are included to inspire thought and may be used in different documents. If you would like to share one of your own favorite quotes, send it to FIMES with its exact references. If it is from a "serious" source, we will add it to the list.

I beleive that only as men choose to work together can they achieve the fullness of personal development; that only as each accepts a responsibility for choice can they enter into that communion of men from which arise the higher purposes […]. I believe that that the expansion of cooperation and the develoment of the individual are mutually dependent realities, and that a due proportion or balance between them is a necessary condition of human welfare.

Chester I. Barnard, CEO and organizational sciences theorist
The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard, University Press, 1938, p.296

The economic problem is not - if we look into the future - the permanent problem of the human race. […] When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the speudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years. […] I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue- that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable […].

Lord John Maynard Keynes (1928), Econmist and financiar
The Collected Writings, 1972, p.326, 329-331

We suffer from is a lack of balance, due to a purely material development of technical science. This lack of balance can only be remedied by a spiritual develomemnt in the same sphere, that is, in the sphere of work. […]
A civilization based upon the spirituality of work would give to Man the very strongest possible roots in the wide universe, and would consequently be the opposite of that state in which we find ourselves now, characterized by an almost total uprootedness. Such a civilization is , therfore, by its very nature, the object to which we should aspire as the antidote to our sufferings. […]
The world spirituality doesn't imply any particular affiliation.

Simone Weil, Philosopher and workwoman
Simone Weil, The need for roots, 1987. p.93-94

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