"The real dividing line between things we call work and the things we call leisure is that in leisure, however active we may be, we make our own choices and our own decisions. We feel for the time being that our life is our own."
About the author
Raymond Williams
Cultural Critic, Writer
Raymond Williams was a Welsh cultural critic and theorist known for his influential ideas on culture and society, particularly in his work 'Culture and Society'.
All quotes by Raymond Williams →Same author
More quotes by Raymond Williams
"On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved centre of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times."
"Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language."
"To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair inevitable."
"What breaks capitalism, all that will ever break capitalism, is capitalists. The faster they run the more strain on their heart."
"It wasn't idealism that made me, from the beginning, want a more secure and rational society. It was an intellectual judgment, to which I still hold. When I was young its name was socialism. We can be deflected by names. But the need was absolute, and is still absolute."