I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

We need to redefine "hard work" to include "hard thinking."

The person who outsmarts you is out working you. The person who finds shortcuts is out working you. The person with a better strategy is out working you.

Usually, the hardest work is thinking of a better way to do it.

hard work is a misleading term. physical effort & long hours do not constitute hard work. hard work is when someone pays you to do something you'd rather not be doing. anytime you'd rather be doing something other than the thing you're doing...you're doing hard work.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” Thinking is not only hard — it’s the single most important thing in life. Remember: The quality of our thoughts determines the quality of our lives.

Hard work is not always something you can see. It is not always physical effort.

In fact, the most powerful form of hard work is thinking clearly. Designing a winning strategy may not look very active, but make no mistake: it is very hard work.

Strategy often beats sweat.

Of all the actors and actresses I've ever worked with, the hardest worker is Fred Astaire. He behaved like he was a young man whose whole destiny depended on being successful in his first film. He rehearses between takes, after takes - there's no limit to his professionalism.

I don’t even know what ‘working hard’ means. If you get to sit behind a desk all day in an air-conditioned room, there’s no such thing as hard work.

I have been a pretty hard worker all my life, from boyhood right up to the present day. But I have never worked harder than during the period when I was carrying through the organisation of our munition supplies—not even during my Premiership, strenuous and arduous as those years were.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.” — Henry Ford

I’m not the hardest working person — I’m actually a lazy person. I work through bursts of energy where I’m really motivated with something.

What is the hardest task in the world? To think.

Because, to do manual work now, means in reality to shut yourself up for ten or twelve hours a day in an unhealthy workshop, and to remain chained to the same task for twenty or thirty years, and maybe for your whole life.
It means to be doomed to a paltry wage, to the uncertainty of the morrow, to want of work, often to destitution, more often than not to death in a hospital, after having worked forty years to feed, clothe, amuse, and instruct others than yourself and your children.
It means to bear the stamp of inferiority all your life; because, whatever the politicians tell us, the manual worker is always considered inferior to the brain worker, and the one who has toiled ten hours in a workshop has not the time, and still less the means, to give himself the high delights of science and art, nor even to prepare himself to appreciate them; he must be content with the crumbs from the table of privileged persons.

A hard-working person might not end up being successful, but a successful person is most definitely a hard worker.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.