“When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the nations where economic prejudices have not yet uprooted the hatred of work. … The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind. … The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.”

—  Paul Lafargue

The Right to Be Lazy (1883), H. Kerr, trans. (1907), pp. 11-12

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Paul Lafargue 5
French politician 1842–1911

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