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Leisure

time that is freely used by individuals

Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education.

Quotes

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The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system. ~ Arthur C. Clarke
 
The leisurely person is independent in the sense that the value of his leisure does not depend on any consequence it may have, for example, the consequence that it restores his energy for the next day’s work. ~ Lawrence Haworth
 
In our bourgeois Western world total labor has vanquished leisure. Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture—and ourselves. ~ Josef Pieper
  • What, then, shall we do? someone may ask. What else, indeed, than devote ourselves to the care of our souls, keeping all our leisure free from other things.
  • The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.
    • Arthur C. Clarke, interview with Los Angeles Free Press, pp. 42–43, 47 (25 April 1969)
  • As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men’s taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared.
    • Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 77.
  • I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.
  • Certain ways of life, especially leisureliness and contemplation, are said to be marked by “self-sufficiency” (Aristotle). Here there is a double connotation of not needing much from others to carry on such a life, and of the life itself having the character of finality. Both connotations suggest forms of independence. Not needing much from others means being independent of them. And “finality” implies that the activity of thinking, or, more generally, of being leisurely has intrinsic worth. Thus the leisurely person is independent in the sense that the value of his leisure does not depend on any consequence it may have, for example, the consequence that it restores his energy for the next day’s work.
  • Do not say, "when I have leisure I will study," for you may never have leisure.
  • The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
    • Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (New York: 1954), #172.
  • With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. … Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.
    • Max Horkheimer, “The End of Reason,” The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (1982), p. 39.
  • In 1930, with the world plunged into a deep economic depression, economist John Maynard Keynes published a rosy forecast for the future. He predicted that in 100 years, his grandchildren would only need to work 15-hour weeks, and the greatest problem facing a member of society would be “how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”
    Just shy of a century later, Keynes’ prediction couldn’t be further from reality. People today feel like they’re stuck on a hamster wheel. As corporate profits soar, wages have failed to keep pace. Millions of Americans juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet. Today, the average worker has to clock 70 hours a week to sustain the same quality of life that 40 hours of work afforded 50 years ago. And for many, cellphones and laptops have made it impossible to ever escape the grip of work, even at home. With one income no longer enough to sustain an average family budget, parents’ days are lengthened by the extra time necessary to shuttle children to and from child care.
    Contrary to Keynes’ predictions, leisure time isn’t expanding; it’s disappearing. Less and less free time leaves Americans feeling more on edge, more anxious, and more alone than ever before. We are disconnected from each other mentally, physically and emotionally, and we witness the ripple effects in the erosion of civility, the growth of fringe politics, and the increase in violence, suicide and overdose rates. The nation’s emotional health is spiraling in part because there is less and less time for leisure and connection.
  • Has it ever been really noted to what extent a genuinely religious life … requires a leisure class, or half-leisure—I mean leisure with a good conscience, from way back, by blood, to which the aristocratic feeling that work disgraces is not altogether alien—the feeling that it makes soul and body common. And that consequently our modern, noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates and prepares people, more than anything else does, precisely for “unbelief.”
  • In our bourgeois Western world total labor has vanquished leisure. Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture—and ourselves.
  • Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil.
    • Mark Slouka, “Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness,” Harper’s, November 2004.
  • Knowledge is the product of leisure. The members of a very primitive society have no time to amass knowledge; their days are fully occupied with the provision of the bare necessities of life. But as soon as a community begins to accumulate wealth, and so becomes able to support a leisured class (priests, instructors of rich men's children), an opportunity is created for those who desire knowledge to devote their lives to its acquirement. Out of this 'curiosity to know' science is born.
  • There is no wisdom without leisure.
    • Ancient Jewish Wisdom, cited by W. B. Yeats in an address given 3/28/1923.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 437.
  • And leave us leisure to be good.
  • No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
    But only time for Grief.
  • Retired Leisure,
    That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
  • Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels,
    How heavily we drag the load of life!
    Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
    It makes us wander, wander earth around
    To fly that tyrant, thought.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 125.

See also

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