“Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its favorite microscopic labor of self-examination, and for its soft placidity called ‘prayer,’ the state of perpetual readiness for the ‘coming of God’), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is dishonoring – that it vulgarizes body and soul – is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy, time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud industriousness [Arbeitsamkeit] educates and prepares for ‘unbelief’ more than anything else?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil (58)

“Work. The word has a stink of executions and of slow agony. It’s the coat of mud and pus that soils the hidden side of the gold coins: the decimated slaves, the flayed serfs, the proletarians sliced in two by fatigue, fear, and the oppression of the passing days, life broken into pieces by the wage. The truest monuments to its efficient glory are the glassed in balconies looking out over gates saying “Arbeit macht frei”, a message that expresses the quintessence of commodity civilization: work will free you... from life.”

― Raoul Vaneigem,
Address to the Living (chapter 2)

“What destroys a person more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure – as a mere automaton of ‘duty’? That is the recipe for décadence, and no less for idiocy.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (11)

„Faulheit ist die Mutter aller Erfindungen.“

“Laziness is the mother of all inventions.”

— Curt Goetz

1. „Faulheit ist die Triebfeder des Fortschritts.“

“Laziness is the driver of progress.”

“Laziness is the driving force of progress.”


2. „Faulheit ist die Mutter des Fortschritts.“

“Laziness is the mother of progress.”


3. „Faulheit denkt scharf.“

“Laziness thinks sharp(ly).”


Deutsche Sprichwörter (German proverbs)

“Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”

— Albert Camus, A Happy Death

“God loves an idle rainbow,
No less than laboring seas.”

— Ralph Hodgson, Three Poems (II)

“But not enough has been thought about idleness. It is the foundation of all happiness and the end of all philosophy. … Man lies down much too little. He stands and sits about all the time. It’s not good for animal comfort. Only when a man lies down is he quite at peace with himself.”

— Erich Maria Remarque,
Three Comrades (chapter 15)

“On the whole, the enjoyment of leisure is something which decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner.”

— Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“No, the enjoyment of an idle life doesn't cost any money. The capacity for true enjoyment of idleness is lost in the moneyed class and can be found only among people who have a supreme contempt for wealth. It must come from an inner richness of the soul in a man who loves the simple ways of life and who is somewhat impatient with the business of making money.”

— Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended. But it is just as easy to see from the dreaded occasion as from the recommended remedy that this whole view is of very plebian extraction. Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is a truly divine life, if one is not bored. To be sure, idleness may be the occasion of losing one’s property etc., but the noble nature does not fear such things but does indeed fear being bored. The Olympian gods were not bored; happy they lived in happy idleness. A female beauty who neither sews nor spins nor irons nor reads nor plays an instrument is happy in idleness, for she is not bored. Idleness, then, is so far from being the root of evil that it is rather the true good. Boredom is the root of evil; it is that which must be held off. Idleness is not the evil; indeed, it may be said that everyone who lacks a sense for it thereby shows that he has not raised himself to the human level. There is an indefatigable activity that shuts a person out of the world of spirit and places him in a class with the animals, which instinctively must always be in motion. There are people who have an extraordinary talent for transforming everything into a business operation, whose whole life is a business operation, who fall in love and are married, hear a joke, and admire a work of art with the same businesslike zeal with which they work at the office. The Latin proverb otium est pulvinar diaboli [idleness is the devil’s pillow] is quite correct, but the devil does not find time to lay his head on this pillow if one is not bored. But since people believe that it is man’s destiny to work, the antithesis idleness/work is correct. I assume that it is man’s destiny to amuse himself, and therefore my antithesis is no less correct.”

— Søren Kierkegaard,
Either/Or (Vol I) (chapter 7)

“Boredom is the demonic pantheism. It becomes evil itself if one continues in it as such; as soon as it is annulled, however, it is the true pantheism. But it is annulled only by amusing oneself—ergo, one ought to amuse oneself. To say that it is annulled by working betrays a lack of clarity, for idleness can certainly be canceled by work, since this is its opposite, but boredom cannot, as is seen in the fact that the busiest workers of all, those whirring insects with their bustling buzzing, are the most boring of all, and if they are not bored, it is because they do not know what boredom is—but then the boredom is not annulled.”

— Søren Kierkegaard,
Either/Or (Vol I) (chapter 7)

“Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.”

— Emma Goldman,
Anarchism and Other Essays (chapter 1)

„Müssiggang ist aller Psychologie Anfang. Wie? wäre Psychologie ein—Laster?“

“Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? Is psychology a—vice?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols; §1. 1)

„Müßiggang ist aller Philosophie Anfang. Folglich—ist Philosophie ein Laster?“

“Idleness is the beginning of all philosophy. Consequently—is philosophy a vice?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, from a draft of Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols)

“The bottom line is simple: all of us deserve to make the most of our potential as we see fit, to be the masters of our own destinies. Being forced to sell these things away to survive is tragic and humiliating. We don’t have to live like this.”

— CrimethInc., The Mythology of Work

“Never take any official post. If one does that, one becomes just a plain John Anyman, a tiny little cog in the machine of the body politic [State]. The individual ceases to be himself the manager of the operation, and then theories can be of little help. One acquires a noscript, and implicit in that are all the consequences of sin and evil. The law under which one slaves is equally boring no matter whether advancement is swift or slow. A noscript can never be disposed of; it would take a criminal act for that, which would incur a public whipping, and even then one cannot be sure of not being pardoned by royal decree and acquiring the noscript again.”

— Søren Kierkegaard,
Either/Or (Vol I) (chapter 7)