“Slavery… dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.”
Source: Democracy in America
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Alexis De Tocqueville 135
French political thinker and historian 1805–1859Related quotes
“Idleness and Pride Tax with a heavier Hand than Kings and Parliaments;”
Letter to Charles Thomson, 11 July 1765; also quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). The last sentence is sometimes misquoted as "If we can get rid of the former, we can get rid of the latter".
Epistles
Context: Idleness and Pride Tax with a heavier Hand than Kings and Parliaments; If we can get rid of the former we may easily bear the Latter.
“The idle mind knows not what it wants.”
Otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit.
As quoted by Aulus Gellius in Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights), Book XIX, Chapter X
Iphigenia
“Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.”
20 July 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
“Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.”
Source: The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
“That happy age when a man can be idle with impunity.”
"Rip Van Winkle".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Principle attributed to Popper by Ryszard Kapiscinski in New York Times obituary, 1995.
Misattributed
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/magazine/lives-well-lived-karl-popper-the-philosopher-as-giantslayer.html