Paul Lafargue Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

Jehovah … have his worshippers the supreme example of ideal laziness; after six days of work, he rests for all eternity.

Paul Lafargue
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
O Laziness, mother of the arts and noble virtues, be thou the balm of human anguish.

Paul Lafargue
Work, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in order that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become miserable. Such is the inexorable law of capitalist production.

Paul Lafargue
In proportion as the machine is improved and performs man's work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the labourer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine. O, absurd and murderous competition!

Paul Lafargue
Our epoch has been called the century of work. It is in fact the century of pain, misery and corruption.

Paul Lafargue