“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)

“People don’t need any convincing to hate their jobs—their jobs do that for them. Like hating the police, hating your job is one of the most beautiful and natural things you can do, which is why popular culture works so hard to convince us that cops are heroes and that jobs are actually good.”

— Kassandra Vee, Work Sucks

“When every one is to cultivate themself into a human being, condemning a person to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory worker must tire themself to death twelve hours and more, they are cut off from becoming human. Every labor is to have the intent that the person be satisfied. Therefore they must become a master in it too, be able to perform it as a totality. They who in a pin-factory only put on the heads, only draw the wire, work, as it were, mechanically, like a machine; they remain half­ trained, do not become a master: their labor cannot satisfy them, it can only fatigue them. Their labor is nothing by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; they labor only into another's hands, and are used (exploited) by this other.”

— Max Stirner,
The Ego and Its Own (First part. II. 3. §2)

“We must realize that we have all reached a turning point where we can no longer afford to make money rather than good sense.

Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.”

— Buckminster Fuller,
Cosmography (chapter 7)

“Another example of the uninteresting is work, which passes for one’s lifework, for the human calling. This is the origin of the prejudice that one has to earn his bread, and that it is shameful to have bread without having worked a bit to get it: this is the pride of the wage. Work has no merit in itself and does no honor to anyone, just as the life of the idler brings him no disgrace. Either you take an interest in work activity, and this interest doesn’t let you rest, you have to be active: and then work is your desire, your special pleasure without placing it above the laziness of the idler which is his pleasure. Or you use work to pursue another interest, a result or a ‘wage,’ and you submit to work only as a means to this end; and then work is not interesting in itself and has no pretension of being so, and you can recognize that it is not anything valuable or sacred in itself, but simply something that is now unavoidable for gaining the desired result, the wage. But the work that is considered as an ‘honor for the human being’ and as his ‘calling’ has become the creator of economics and remains the mistress of sacred socialism, where, in its quality as ‘human labor,’ it is supposed to ‘develop human capacities,’ and where this development is a human calling, an absolute interest.”

— Max Stirner, Stirner's Critics