Love Quote by David O. McKay

McKay’s line reads like a devotional reframing of labor at a moment when work was being recast as both civic duty and moral proving ground. A clergyman speaking to a modernizing America (and, pointedly, to the Latter-day Saint community he led) treats employment not as a mere economic necessity but as a spiritual posture. The triad - privilege, power, love - does careful rhetorical work: it moves from external circumstance (having access to work), to inner capacity (being able to do it), to emotional alignment (wanting to do it). By the time he lands on “success,” the word has been smuggled away from money or status and redefined as a kind of sanctified enthusiasm.

The intent is pastoral and disciplinary at once. Calling work a “gift” softens the grind; calling it a “blessing” sacralizes endurance. The subtext is that resentment is a spiritual problem, not just a workplace one. If you can be taught to love work, you can be taught to accept hierarchies, routines, and sacrifice with fewer questions. That makes the quote soothing for people who feel adrift, and quietly demanding for people who feel exploited.

Context matters: McKay’s era lived through depression, war, and the rise of corporate life - periods when institutions needed citizens to see labor as meaning, not just as wages. The line offers dignity and purpose, but it also sidesteps the brutal fact that not all “privilege to work” is equally distributed, and not all work is equally dignifying. The brilliance is its emotional alchemy; the risk is how easily it can become a theology of hustle.