“Without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things…What will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours?”
-Bertrand Russell
“We keep a large percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense with their labour by making the others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man.”
-Bertrand Russell
“There will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion…At least 1 per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance…men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all…Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others.”
-Bertrand Russell proposing a 4 hour work day