Leisure Quotes

Quotes

• What, then, shall we do? someone may ask. What else, indeed, than devote ourselves to the care of our souls, keeping all our leisure free from other things.
  • Basil of Caesarea, On Greek Literature, Loeb Classical Library, Volume 270, p. 415

• The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.
  • Arthur C. Clarke, interview with Los Angeles Free Press, pp. 42–43, 47 (25 April 1969)

• As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared.
  • Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 77.

• The increased use of robots in manufacturing processes will inevitably create even more unemployment. This is already happening world-wide, especially in industrially developed countries. However, the use of robots creates more wealth, and with a rational world economy based on co-operation and sharing of resources and technology, the ability to supply human needs and also to increase leisure becomes practically possible… The coming [major, game changing] stock market crash will inevitably cause much unemployment. This will lead to a complete change of government priorities: the supplying of adequate food, shelter, health-care and education will become paramount responsibilities of all forward looking nations. The waste of resources as today, in armaments and competitive practices, will cease. A rational and sustainable economic structure based on sufficiency will become the norm. Leisure will be the natural by-product of such a structure.
  • Benjamin Creme Maitreya’s Mission Vol. II (1993)

• Man now stands on the threshold of a new perception of himself, his purpose and the world in which he lives. This new awareness will evoke undreamt-of skills and talents which yet await expression, and allow men to enter the abode of gods. When man sees himself truly as he is naught will prevent the manifestation of his divine powers. On all sides this glory will be seen, lighting a path to the farthest stars. Until that blessed time man must learn and train himself in leisure. Without leisure man has little chance to grow. Leisure must be seen as the prerequisite for that creative thought and action which will transform all life for men. In an age of competition the old adage holds. Work alone confers the right to eat. But man is ready to experience a new relationship; a new and caring cooperation beckons him to be his brother’s keeper and to safeguard the right of all to the necessities of life. More and more, machines will free men to be themselves. Leisure will ensure that each man can reach his full potential, reflective of his stage upon the journey to perfection, adding his gifts for the enrichment of the Whole… Leisure is the key, and to ensure leisure men must share… Entering a new age where machines will cater for the needs of all, men must share as brothers and walk together towards the dawn.
  • Benjamin Creme, Leisure is the key, Share International, (November 1986)

• I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.
  • Salvador Dalí, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 79

• If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
  • Stephen Hawking, quoted in “Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots” Huffington Post, (8 October 2015)

• Certain ways of life, especially leisureliness and contemplation, are said to be marked by “self-sufficiency” (Aristotle). Here there is a double connotation of not needing much from others to carry on such a life, and of the life itself having the character of finality. Both connotations suggest forms of independence. Not needing much from others means being independent of them. And “finality” implies that the activity of thinking, or, more generally, of being leisurely has intrinsic worth. Thus the leisurely person is independent in the sense that the value of his leisure does not depend on any consequence it may have, for example, the consequence that it restores his energy for the next day’s work.
  • Lawrence Haworth, Autonomy: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology and Ethics (Yale University Press: 1986), pp. 12-13.

• Do not say, “when I have leisure I will study,” for you may never have leisure.
  • Hillel the Younger, Pirkei Avot 2:5

• The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
  • Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (New York: 1954), #172.

• With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. … Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.
  • Max Horkheimer, “The End of Reason,” The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (1982), p. 39.

• Has it ever been really noted to what extent a genuinely religious life … requires a leisure class, or half-leisure—I mean leisure with a good conscience, from way back, by blood, to which the aristocratic feeling that work disgraces is not altogether alien—the feeling that it makes soul and body common. And that consequently our modern, noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates and prepares people, more than anything else does, precisely for “unbelief.”
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, W. Kauffman, trans. (New York: 1992), § 58.

• In our bourgeois Western world total labor has vanquished leisure. Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture—and ourselves.
  • Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (1948).

• The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.
  • Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness (1932).

• Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil.
  • Mark Slouka, “Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness,” Harper’s, November 2004.

• Knowledge is the product of leisure. The members of a very primitive society have no time to amass knowledge; their days are fully occupied with the provision of the bare necessities of life. But as soon as a community begins to accumulate wealth, and so becomes able to support a leisured class (priests, instructors of rich men’s children), an opportunity is created for those who desire knowledge to devote their lives to its acquirement. Out of this ‘curiosity to know’ science is born.
  • Edward Bradford Titchener, An Outline of Psychology (1916), p. 1.

• There is no wisdom without leisure.
  • Ancient Jewish Wisdom, cited by W. B. Yeats in an address given 3/28/1923.

Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 437.

• And leave us leisure to be good.
  • Thomas Gray, Hymn, Adversity, scene 3.

• No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
  But only time for Grief.
  • Thomas Hood, The Song of the Shirt.

• Retired Leisure,
  That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
  • John Milton, Il Penseroso (1631), line 49.

• Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 232.

• Leisure is pain?; take off our chariot wheels,
  How heavily we drag the load of life!
  Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
  It makes us wander, wander earth around
  To fly that tyrant, thought.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 125.