“Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits.”

— Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness

“But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all.”

— Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness

“Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.”

— Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness

“They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.”

― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“‘Labor’ is the living basis of private property, it is private property as the creative source of itself. Private property is nothing but objectified labor. If it is desired to strike a mortal blow at private property, one must attack it not only as a material state of affairs, but also as activity, as labor. It is one of the greatest misapprehensions to speak of free, human, social labor, of labor without private property. ‘Labor’ by its very nature is unfree, unhuman, unsocial activity, determined by private property and creating private property. Hence the abolition of private property will become a reality only when it is conceived as the abolition of ‘labor’ (an abolition which, of course, has become possible only as a result of labor itself, that is to say, has become possible as a result of the material activity of society and which should on no account be conceived as the replacement of one category by another).”

— Karl Marx, Draft of an Article on Friedrich List's book: Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie (§2)

“A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.

I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.”

— George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (chapter 22)

“A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure.… I say this of the plongeur because it is his case I have been considering; it would apply equally to numberless other types of worker.”

— George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (chapter 22)

“The chief deficiency of active people. – Active people are usually deficient in the higher activity: I mean that of the individual. They are active as officials, merchants, scholars, that is as generic beings, but not as quite distinct separate and single individuals; in this respect they are lazy. It is the misfortune of the active that their activity is almost always a little unreasonable. For instance, we must not ask the money-making banker the reason of his restless activity: it is foolish. The active roll as the stone rolls, according to the stupidity of mechanics. All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a merchant, an official, or a scholar.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part I) (283)

“Today as always, people fall into two groups: slaves and free people. Whoever does not have two-thirds of their day for themself, is a slave, whatever they may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human

“In favour of the idle. – As a sign that the value of a contemplative life has decreased, scholars now vie with active people in a sort of hurried enjoyment, so that they appear to value this mode of enjoying more than that which really pertains to them, and which, as a matter of fact, is a far greater enjoyment. Scholars are ashamed of otium [idleness]. But there is one noble thing about idleness and idlers. If idleness is really the beginning of all vice, it finds itself, therefore, at least in near neighbourhood of all the virtues; the idle man is still a better man than the active.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part I) (284)

“Modern restlessness. – Modern restlessness increases towards the west, so that Americans look upon the inhabitants of Europe as altogether peace-loving and enjoying beings, whilst in reality they swarm about like wasps and bees. This restlessness is so great that the higher culture cannot mature its fruits, it is as if the seasons followed each other too quickly. For lack of rest our civilisation is turning into a new barbarism. At no period have the active, that is, the restless, been of more importance. One of the necessary corrections, therefore, which must be undertaken in the character of humanity is to strengthen the contemplative element on a large scale. But every individual who is quiet and steady in heart and head already has the right to believe that he possesses not only a good temperament, but also a generally useful virtue, and even fulfils a higher mission by the preservation of this virtue.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part I) (285)

“We shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter – to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!”

— John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren

“Humanity ruthlessly uses every individual as material for the heating of its great machines; but what then is the purpose of the machines, when all individuals (that is, the human race) are useful only to maintain them? Machines that are ends in themselves: is that the umana commedia [human comedy]?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part I) (585)

“Those who commend work. – In the glorification of ‘work’, in the unwearied talk of the ‘blessing of work’, I see the same covert idea as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. Fundamentally, one now feels at the sight of work – one always means by work that hard industriousness from early till late – that such work is the best policeman, that it keeps everyone in bounds and can mightily hinder the development of reason, covetousness, desire for independence. For it uses up an extraordinary amount of nervous energy, which is thus denied to reflection, brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it sets a small goal always in sight and guarantees easy and regular satisfactions. Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity. – And now! Horror! Precisely the ‘worker’ has become dangerous! The place is swarming with ‘dangerous individuals’! And behind them the danger of dangers – the individual!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (173)

“In fact, work could be reduced to four or even three hours a day, to produce all the goods that are produced now.”

— Peter Kropotkin,
The Conquest of Bread (chapter 8)