Leisure Class Quotes & Sayings

Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. — W.E.B. Du Bois

The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion. — Thorstein Veblen

For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us. — Noam Chomsky

No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class ... — Gertrude Atherton

Do not mistake a crowd of big wage-earners for the leisure class. — Clive Bell

Our focus going forward is on sectors where the life of China's middle class can be upgraded: health, travel, leisure, education, and the Internet. We call it marrying China's growth with global resources. — Guo Guangchang

The closest thing we have to the traditional ideology of the leisure class is a group of artists and intellectuals who regard their work as play and their play as work. — David Riesman

A Society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure and to another all the burdens of work condemns both classes to spiritual sterility. — Lewis Mumford

The taste of the more recent accessions to the leisure class proper and of the middle and lower classes still requires a pecuniary beauty to supplement the aesthetic beauty, even in those objects which are primarily admired for the beauty that belongs to them as natural growths. — Thorstein Veblen

Yet there was this to be said for unfavorable relationships in the wealth-distribution equation. It meant the existence of a leisure class and the development of an attractive way of life which, at its best, encouraged culture and grace. As long as the other end of the scale was not too badly off, as long as the leisure classes did not entirely forget their responsibilities while enjoying their privileges, as long as their culture took no obviously unhealthy turn, there was always the tendency in Eternity to forgive the departure from the ideal wealth-distribution pattern and to search for other, less attractive maladjustments. — Isaac Asimov

I aspire to be of the leisure class, therefore, I go to class. Because I am of the working class, needs must, I teach class, where it is to be learned, I have no class. — M. Alexander Shipley

A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him. — George Orwell

The purely emotional form of Pietism is, as Ritschl has pointed out, a religious dilettantism for the leisure class. — Max Weber

Of actions some aim at what is necessary and useful, and some at what is honorable. And the preference given to one or the other class of actions must necessarily be like the preference given to one or other part of the soul and its actions over the other; there must be war for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things useful and necessary for the sake of things honorable. — Aristotle.

Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery. — Bertrand Russell

I did not then understand that we - the women of that academic community - as in so many middle-class communities of the period - were expected to fill both the part of the Victorian Lady of Leisure, the Angel in the House, and also of the Victorian cook, scullery maid, laundress, governess, and nurse. I only sensed that there were false distractions sucking at me, and I wanted desperately to strip my life down to what was essential. June — Adrienne Rich

Whereas during the primitive stage of capitalist accumulation "political economy considers the proletarian only as a worker," who only needs to be allotted the indispensable minimum for maintaining his labor power, and never considers him "in his leisure and humanity," this ruling-class perspective is revised as soon as commodity abundance reaches a level that requires an additional collaboration from him. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. — Guy Debord

I think I need a little break. I've got a two-year old. I'll be part of The Leisure Class for a while. — Lauren Ambrose

He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an aristocrat; - so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Morality is only for the middle class, sweet. The lower class can't afford it, and the upper classes have entirely too much leisure time to fill — Lisa Kleypas

It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure. — William Butler Yeats

History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class. — Amor Towles

The key to a vibrant middle class is an abundance of jobs that pay enough so that workers can provide for themselves and their families, enjoy leisure time, save for retirement and pay for their children's education so they can grow up and earn even more than their parents. — Marco Rubio

Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books are a powerful antidote for loneliness, for the moral purposelessness of the leisure class. It's our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don't read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn't some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. — Steve Almond

Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-classparents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement
a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible. — David Elkind

Nothing like a few restful weeks contemplating the decline of civilization to restore the humors. What I did on my summer vacation was listen to a lot of people talk about the decline of practically everything - you could call it the leisure of the theory class. — Molly Ivins

The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life. — Thorstein Veblen

The leisure class is one in which individuals have sufficient economic security and sufficient leisure to find opportunity for a variety of satisfactions in life. — Eleanor Roosevelt

At either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class. — Eric Jay Beck

The leisure class, a.k.a. the landed gentry, on whom my business depends," he told Geronimo Manezes, "are the hunters, not the gatherers; they make their way by the immoral road of exploitation, not the virtuous path of industry. But I, to make my way, have to treat the rich as the good guys, the lions, the creators of wealth and guardians of freedom, which naturally I don't mind doing because I'm an exploiter too and I also want to think of myself as virtuous. — Salman Rushdie

I've learned one thing, and that's to quit worrying about stupid things. You have four years to be irresponsible here, relax. Work is for people with jobs. You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So stay out late. Go out with your friends on a Tuesday when you have a paper due on Wednesday. Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does ... — Tom Petty