We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious
that they become absolutely stupid.
— Oscar
Wilde
There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy stupid ones. Leave
them alone, they do no harm. Second, there are the hardworking intelligent ones. They make excellent
staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hardworking,
stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for
everyone. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.
— General von Manstein about the German Officer Corps
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody is watching.
— Mark Twain
You think your job is tough — try trading with Ernie Zelinski. His
job is not working, and he's been doing it successfully for the last 14 years.
— Keiko Ohnuma, Business Writer, Oakland Tribune writing about the book
The Joy of
Not Working and it's author
He that hath a trade, hath an estate.
— Benjamin Franklin
I think in every company today there is at least one worker
who is slowly going crazy.
— Joseph Heller
The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before your boss does.
— Unknown wise person
The really idle man gets nowhere. The perpetually busy man does
not get much further.
— Sir Henage Ogiivie
The longer you work, the more money you'll have for retirement. But the longer you work, the
less time you'll have to enjoy that retirement.
— Wall Street Journal
Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.
— Gareth Beynon, British Doctor, about success in privatized medicine
Always reserve enough time in your day to loaf, relax, and think creative
thoughts. This will have much more of a positive effect on your financial and personal well-being than two
or three hours of extra work. Not only does loafing take your imagination to greater heights, it's good for
your long-term health, because it reduces stress and helps prevent many diseases. Moreover, when you loaf,
you are preparing for the time when you achieve enough wealth to take it easy. You are giving yourself a
taste of the freedom and prosperity that is coming to you.
— from The Joy of
Not Working by Ernie Zelinski
A non-doer is very often a critic — that is, someone who sits back
and watches doers, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It's easy to be a critic,
but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change.
— Dr. Wayne Dyer
It's better to do a sub-par job working on the right project than a great
job working on the wrong project.
— Robert J. Ringer
After you've worked hard to get what you want, take the time to enjoy
it.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Try to have fun at
work even if it kills you.
— Unknown not-so-wise workaholic
I say to hell with the work you have to do to earn a living! That kind of
work does us no honor; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs who exploit us. But the work you do
because you like to do it, because you've heard the call, you've got a vocation — that's ennobling! We
should all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno — I don't work. And I don't care if they hang me,
I won't work! Yet I'm alive! I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it!
— Luis Buñuel
Writing goodbye letters for
work in preparation for quitting one's job is much more fun than work
itself.
— Unknown wise
person
A lot of us are working harder than we want, at things we don't like to do. Why? It figures! In order to
afford the sort of existence we don't care to live.
— Bradford Angier
Retirement is a great opportunity. It is the beginning
of life- not the end.
— from
How
to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
How
to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on Facebook
Retirement quotations help me put work,
leisure, and retirement in proper perspective.
— Unknown wise person
Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent
person will obtain, the lazy one never.
— Benjamin Franklin
How would you like it if, at your job, every time you made the slightest
mistake a little red light went on over your head and 18,000 people stood up and screamed at you?
— Jacques Plante, ex-hockey great with Montreal
Canadiens
I grew up in New England. I think I was brought up with the Puritan ethic: that if you worked really
hard in life, then good would come to you. The harder you work, the luckier you get. I've come to believe
that it's the smarter you work, the better.
— Ken Blanchard
Life is too short to do anything for oneself that one can pay others to do
for one.
— W. Somerset Maugham
People who observe no limits in atte
mpting to get work done aren't nearly as smart as they think. Hard work can be
done by any fool. But to be highly productive and still have plenty of time to rest and play — this is
where true genius resides.
— from Career
Success Without a Real Job
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy
shit we don't need.
— from the 1999 movie Fight Club
There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
— Albert Camus
Work is an essential part of being alive. Your
work is your identity. It tells you who you are. It’s gotten so abstract. People don’t work for the sake of
working. They’re working for a car, a new house, or a vacation. It’s not the
work itself that’s important to them. There’s such a joy in doing work well.
— Kay Stepkin, U.S. baker, quoted in Working by Studs Terkel
Love your job but never fall in love with your company because you never knew when it
stops loving you.
— Christine Lim
Machines should work; people should think.
— Unknown Former IBM Wise Employee
Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
— Margaret Fuller
Most people are too busy earning a living to make any [real] money.
— Joe Karbo
You don't resign from these jobs; you escape from them.
— Dawn Steel
What work I have done I have done because it
has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who
has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work — not
somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the
man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the
world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load
of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment
of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or
physical, can never be great.
— Mark Twain
It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is
done.
— Oscar Wilde
Work is for cowards.
— U. J. Puckett (Pool hustler at the age of 66)
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be
sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
— Mark Twain
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference
between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second
is disastrous.
— Margot Fonteyn
Anyone can achieve something important. Contrary to popular belief, the key
is not hard work, but finding the right thing to achieve.
— from Career
Success Without a Real Job
Life is mostly froth and bubble.
Two things stand like stone:
Dodging duty at the double,
Retiring and leaving work alone.
— Unknown Wise Retiree
Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
So much work, so few women to do it.
— Unknown wise person
A woman's work, grave sirs, is never done.
— Mrs. Eusden
If a woman's work is never done, she should start earlier.
— Ron Stevens
More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.
— Rudyard Kipling
Measuring busy-ness ... is far easier than measuring business. Busy-ness
might feel good (like checking your email on Christmas weekend) but business means producing things of
actual value. Often, the two are completely unrelated.
— Seth Godin, writing on his Seth's Blog
It is in vain that you rise up early and go
late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
— Psalm 127(126) : 2
Syzygy, inexorable, pancreatic, phantasmagoria — anyone who can use those
four words in one sentence will never have to do manual labor.
— W. P. Kinsella
Statistics indicate that, as a result of overwork, modern executives are dropping like flies on the
nation's golf courses.
— Ira Wallach
Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.
— George Bernard Shaw
A champion of the workingman has never been known to die of overwork.
— Robert Frost
Show respect for everyone who works for a living, regardless of how
trivial their job.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Work is the curse of the drinking class.
— Oscar Wilde
My philosophy is that anything worth doing is too hard.
— Wally in Dilbert Cartoon
Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of
labor.
— Mark Twain
One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for
eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day
nor make love for eight hours — all you can do for eight
hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.
— William Faulkner
Work is what they try to con you to do so that you will have the money to be able to buy what they try
to con you to think you want.
— Unknown wise person
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
— Aristotle
What's the use of being a genius if you can't use it as an excuse for
being unemployed?
— Gerald Barzan
The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television.
— Unknown wise person
As a rule, the most dangerous ideas are not the ones that divide
people but those on which they agree.
— Stephen Vizinczey, The Rules of Chaos, 1970
Before I had kids I went home after work to rest. Now I go to work
to rest.
— Simon Ruddell
Anything in life worth having is worth working for.
— Andrew Carnegie
You shouldn't come to work just for the money. You should come to work to
avoid not having any money.
— Catbert: Evil Director of Human Resources in Dilbert Cartoon
It is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in
all their toil.
— Bible: Hebrew, Ecclesiastes 3:13.
Work is work if you're paid to do it, and it's a pleasure if you pay to be
allowed to do it.
— Finley Peter Dunne
Love your work, then you will find pleasure in mastering it.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with
sticks and transporting goods on our backs.
— William Feather
Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good
idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate
income! This is truly income for dummies.
— Steve Pavlina, Author Personal Development for Smart
People
Every prosperous person
who does not work has a creative scheme that does.
— John Otway
The work ethic is a terrible mistake — a cute term
gone haywire.
— from Life's Secret Handbook
Like The Bible, The Joy
of Not Working tells you everything you need to know to resolve your Life crisis, but
doesn’t exclude humor in its presentation. Check Chapter 7, “Lighting the Fire Rather than Being Warmed
by it”, pages 118-120, for a list of 200 activities for your consideration.
— Helga Roberts writing on AuthorsDen.com
Commuter — one who spends his life
In riding to and from his wife;
A man who shaves and takes a train,
And then rides back to shave again.
— E. B. White
If you have always done it that way, it is probably
wrong.
— Charles Kettering
Ask yourself, "If all jobs paid $2 an hour, what job would I want to do?" When
you answer that question, start doing it, even if you have to do it for free at first.
— Greg Aldrik
A gentleman ... sleeps at his work. That's what
work's for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library? So as not to disturb me in my
little nook behind the biography shelves.
— Alan Ayckboum
I was proud to work with the great Gershwin, and I would have done it for
nothing, which I did.
— Howard Dietz
Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.
— Charles Baxter (The Feast of Love)
If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a
job.
— Malcolm Forbes
It's only work if somebody makes you do it.
— Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by Bill Watterson
I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have
kept more of it for themselves.
— Bruce Grocott
For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone
is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.
— Käthe Kollwitz
If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit,
though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
— Henry David Thoreau
Surround yourself with problem solvers, not problem creators.
— Robert J. Ringer
If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do
it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.
— Richard Henry Tawney
What is it that you like doing? If you don’t like it,
get out of it, because you’ll be lousy at it. You don’t have to stay with a job for the rest of your
life, because if you don’t like it you’ll never be successful in it.
— Lee Iacocca
The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without
one.
— Oscar Wilde
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work
with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the
temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
—Kahlil Gibran
People who observe no limits in
attempting to get work done aren't nearly as smart as they think. Hard work can be done by any fool.
But to be highly productive and still have plenty of time to rest and play — this is where true
genius resides.
— from Career
Success Without a Real Job
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over
and over and expecting different results.
— Albert Einstein
A good rest is half the work.
— Yugoslav proverb
Always take an emergency
leisurely.
— Chinese proverb
Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the
scenery you miss by going too fast — you also miss the sense of where
you are going and why.
— Eddie Cantor
Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to
work is a blessing, that love of work is success.
— David O. McKay
Learn to distinguish between these three:
1: Some things need doing better than you or anyone has ever done them before.
2: Some just need doing to get by.
3: Some are not necessary; they don't need any doing and are best left to the misfits of this world to
pursue.
— from The Lazy Person's Guide to Success
If the soul has food for study and learning, nothing is more delightful than an
old age of leisure.
— Cicero
The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its
leisure.
— Irwin Edman
The best work is no work at all.
— Unknown gentleman of leisure
I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world.
— Comte de Mirabeau
Only a person who can live with himself can enjoy
the gift of leisure.
— Henry Greber
Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always
find
someone else to do it for you.
— Mark Twain
Workaholism is an addiction, and like all
addictions,
it blocks creative energy.
— Julia Cameron, writing in The Artist's Way
Never get out of bed before
noon.
— Charles Bukowski
How lovely it is to do nothing at all and
then rest afterwards.
— Spanish proverb
To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your
work.
— Sister Mary Lauretta
Never send a man to do a horse's job.
— Mr. Ed
Never let your inferiors do you a favor — it
will be extremely costly.
— H. L. Mencken
Never retire without first having read the international
best-seller How to
Retire Happy, Wild, and Free.
— Many people
The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without
one.
— Oscar Wilde
The three most harmful addictions are
heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
— Fred Wilson
One must have some sort of occupation nowadays. If I hadn't my debts I
shouldn't have anything to think about.
— Oscar Wilde
Never confuse movement with action.
— Ernest Hemingway
Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.
— Dale Carnegie
Most saints live to regret their career choice.
— Bob Stokes
They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really
are.
— Aldous Huxley
Any idiot can face a crisis — it’s day to day living that wears you out.
— Anton Chekhov
The computer is down. I hope it's something serious.
— Stanton Delaplane
Men have become the tools of their tools.
— Henry David Thoreau
There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish something.
— Thomas Edison
Don't waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the
trade.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
It's not enough to be the best at what you do. You must be perceived as the only one who does what you
do.
— Jerry Garcia
Leisure is the most challenging responsibility a man can be offered.
— William Russell
Ernie has done it again [with How to
Retire Happy, Wild, and Free]. Easy to read, well laid out. Emphasis on simple living,
and preparing for retirement long before you retire.
— Mary Anne Fields, Life Coach and Trainer of Life Unfolds, Houston, Texas
If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose.
That is what leisure means.
— Alan Bennett
Know the moment when to work diligently.
Even more important, know the moment when not to work, but to relax and play instead. This will not only
benefit you immensely, but also will astonish your friends and competitors.
— from Life's Secret Handbook
Few Americans even know what "leisure" really means, and commonly confuse it with
recreation or time off from work, even if that time is spent doing chores.
— Shannon Mullen
Leisure tends to corrupt, and absolute leisure corrupts absolutely.
— Edgar A. Shoaf
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
— Henry David Thoreau
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work
you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had
thought could never be yours.
— Dale Carnegie
Leisure consists in all those virtuous activities by which a man grows morally,
intellectually, and spiritually. It is that which makes a life worth living.
— Cicero
It is impossible to enjoy idling unless there is plenty of work to
do.
— Jerome K. Jerome
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the best product
of civilization.
— Bertrand Russell
Leisure may prove to be a curse rather than a blessing, unless education teaches a flippant
world leisure is not a synonym for entertainment.
— William J. Bogan
If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a
representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.
— S. I. Hayakawa
People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them that
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
— David H. Comins
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the
necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
— Raoul Vaneigem
The things we fear most in organizations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary
sources of creativity.
— Margaret J. Wheatley
It's them who take advantage that get advantage in this world.
— George Elliott
People forget how fast you did a job — but they remember how well you did
it.
— Howard Newton
Some fellows get credit for being conservative when they are only stupid.
— Kin Hubbard
The world is full of willing people. Some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
— Robert Frost
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the
company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
— Sam Walton
You can always tell a Harvard man — but you can't tell him much.
— Unknown Wise Person
When policy fails, try thinking.
— Unknown Wise Person
An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert.
— Frank Lloyd Wright
When it comes to making more money, most people look at the world and see the same opportunities they’ve
seen before: typically, a job. Because they don’t awaken their mind and expand their vision, they don’t see
other opportunities. Yet opportunities do exist. So how do you change your thinking so you can see them?
One way to jolt the brain out of its preconceived category thinking is to bombard it with new
experiences.
— Joe Vitale
The belief in the morality of hard work signifies a hard head.
The question is, why don't people who believe that hard work is so
moral and wonderful move to a Third World country and work fourteen hours a day in one of its coal
mines?
— from The Lazy Person's Guide to Success
Hard work is no match for relaxed, creative action
— from The Lazy Person's Guide to Success
There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
— Albert Camus
Anyone can achieve something important.
Contrary to popular belief, the key is not hard work, but finding the right thing to achieve.
— from Life's Secret Handbook
People who observe no limits in attempting to get work done aren't nearly
as smart as they think.
Hard work can be done by any fool.
But to be highly productive and still have plenty of time to rest and play — this is where true genius
resides.
— from Life's Secret Handbook
There exists above the "productive" man a yet higher species.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
It yet has to be proven that hard work guarantees success.
Millions of people have started at the bottom, worked hard for years, and stayed at the bottom.
To avoid ending up like them, base your actions on creative thought, instead of the merits of hard
work.
This will make it infinitely more likely that you will succeed in life.
— from Life's Secret Handbook
The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
— Albert Camus
Working strictly for money is not the way to true career success.
Stop and ponder money in new ways and you will realize many aspects of it are totally absurd.
You will also realize that after basic necessities are provided for, happiness cares little about
money.
So, why do you care so much about it?
— from Life's Secret Handbook
The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to
do it.
— Mother Teresa
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable
the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with finer
spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world.
You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.
— Woodrow Wilson
Consider this carefully.
If you are working more than eight hours a day, you are in the wrong job.
Either that — or you are doing it wrong.
— from Career Success Without a
Real Job by Ernie Zelinski
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it!
— Robert Heinlein
The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more
sophisticated reasons.
— Dr. David Butler
We work to become, not to acquire.
— Elbert Hubbard
Work to learn. Don't work for money.
— Robert Kiyosaki
A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is
exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he
works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as part of
the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful.
— William Morris
Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the
richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
— Robert Orben
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their
jobs.
— Samuel Goldwyn
If you have a yes-man or yes-woman working for you, one of you is
redundant.
— Former Xerox Manager
The longer the title, the less important the job.
— George McGovern
If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind
there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.
— From Zen, Beginner's Mind From Zen, Beginner's Mind
If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our
backs.
— William Feather
If you hate your job, of all the
thirty-seven alternatives, running away is best.
— Unknown wise
person
