Karl Marx
Philosopher, Economist
"Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers."
Idlers quotes
Idlers
32 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Writer, Physician
"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."
Samuel Johnson
Lexicographer, Essayist, Critic
"Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler."
George Bernard Shaw
Playwright, Critic
"A learned man is an idler who kills time by study."
Alexander Smith
Poet
"Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile."
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Idlers quotes (page 1 of 2)
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"Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life."
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"I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers."
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"By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time."
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"I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."
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"Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish."
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"The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous."
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"No man is so methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring out his time as he whose time is worth nothing."
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