I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work.

Bertrand Russell
About This Quote

This quote, by the founder of the Frankfurt School, is a more extreme version of some of the ideas expressed in the previous quote. Instead of praising work for its own sake, he faults it for causing suffering. He argues that people should spend their time on activities that make them happy and productive rather than working to make money or accumulate possessions.

Source: In Praise Of Idleness And Other Essays

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore. - Lady Gaga

  2. Work without love is slavery. - Mother Teresa

  3. There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time. - Coco Chanel

  4. Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea... - Ayn Rand

  5. I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am... - Audre Lorde

More Quotes By Bertrand Russell
  1. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

  2. To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.

  3. Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

  4. Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean...

  5. Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

Related Topics