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No matter what the thing is, put your conscience into it; do your best.
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“No matter what the thing is, put your conscience into it; do your best.”

Booker T. Washington

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Source
Character Building
Date
1902
Meaning

Meaning of “No matter what the thing is, put your…”

Work gains moral weight when effort and conscience remain present even in tasks that seem small, routine, or unlikely to attract praise.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Character Building, “What Is To Be Our Future?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington asks whether Tuskegee will remain worthy of public confidence and answers by requiring each student and worker to put conscience and full effort into every kind of work.

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Ideas connected with this quotation

BusinessDiscipline Quotes About Habits, Practice & ConsistencyEffortHard WorkHonestyInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityIntegrityLeadershipMotivational Quotes for Action, Effort & PersistenceProductivityResponsibilitySelf-Control Quotes About Restraint & JudgmentShortSuccessCharacterConscienceMotivation For WorkProfessionalismWork Ethic
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An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.
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“An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.”

Henry David Thoreau · Life Without Principle · 1863
Meaning & context

Thoreau defines useful activity independently of external payment, arguing that a person committed to meaningful work continues to exercise ability even when the community does not reward it.

Source details

Life Without Principle, The Atlantic Monthly, 1863; represented Wikisource text. The line follows Thoreau’s claim that a community cannot buy a wise person away from work that genuinely occupies him.

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puts his whole conscience into that work, and does it just as thoroughly as it is possible for him to do it.
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“puts his whole conscience into that work, and does it just as thoroughly as it is possible for him to do it.”

Booker T. Washington · Character Building · 1902
Meaning & context

Conscience is applied to ordinary manual work, making thoroughness a matter of character even when the task is mortar-mixing or bricklaying.

Source details

Character Building, “The Virtue of Simplicity,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The sentence refers specifically to students doing building work at Tuskegee.

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Drive thy business, or it will drive thee.
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“Drive thy business, or it will drive thee.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack · 1740s
Meaning & context

Work becomes harder to control when it is left unmanaged; the maxim favors deliberate direction, priorities, and active stewardship over reactive pressure.

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Poor Richard’s Almanack; a compact maxim about managing work before accumulated demands begin managing you.

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the first morality of a painter, as of everybody else, is to know his business
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“the first morality of a painter, as of everybody else, is to know his business”

John Ruskin · Lectures on Art, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870 · 1870
Meaning & context

Ruskin connects artistic integrity with technical competence: good intentions do not excuse neglect of the craft a maker has undertaken to practise.

Source details

Lectures on Art, Lecture III, Project Gutenberg #19164. Ruskin makes a normative Victorian claim about workmanship and morality; this collection does not universalize it beyond that context.

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The master-word is Work
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“The master-word is Work”

William Osler · The Master-Word in Medicine · 1903
Meaning & context

Osler makes sustained work the organizing principle of his address to medical students, emphasizing disciplined practice over brilliance without application.

Source details

The Master-Word in Medicine, address delivered October 1, 1903 at the opening of the new buildings of the University of Toronto Medical Faculty; reviewed against the represented 1903 John Murphy pamphlet, Internet Archive identifier b28060805. ‘The master-word is Work’ is Osler’s organizing refrain and is followed by his appeal to write the word on the heart and forehead. This remains historical professional rhetoric rather than an endorsement of unsafe working hours or workaholism.

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America is the Land of Labour
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“America is the Land of Labour”

Benjamin Franklin · Information to Those Who Would Remove to America · 1784
Meaning & context

Franklin rejects European fantasies of effortless prosperity in eighteenth-century North America, emphasizing that newcomers should expect productive labor rather than automatic wealth or patronage.

Source details

Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, before March 1784; Founders Online. This is historical emigration advice written for Europeans and is not a claim about present-day U.S. labor or immigration conditions.

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