Work

And now I am one of the unemployed. What do we do all day? We sit on stoops and pause in loose knots on the stained pavements.

People always take great care of their horses. If they were to overwork a horse and make it ill, it would cost something for medicine and the veterinary surgeon, to say nothing of the animal’s board and lodging.

‘Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour.’

‘Prove it,’ said Crass.

One of the pioneers of robotics has written: ‘In the next century inexpensive but capable robots will displace human labour so broadly that the average workday would have to plummet to practically zero to keep everyone employed.’

I don't like work. I'd rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work - no one does - but I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself.

Stretch a bow to the very full,
And you will wish you had stopped in time;
Temper a sword-edge to its very sharpest,
And you will find it soon grows dull.
When bronze and jade fill your hall.

I mend a puncture on my bike. I get pleasure out of being able to do simple, practical jobs – replacing a fuse, changing a wheel, jump-starting the car – because they are not accomplishments generally associated with a temperament like mine.

Disproportionate and unaccountable power, then, is not healthy. It merely bolsters an artificial sense of being somebody. It carries its price to pay.

In the beginning of time the great creator, Reason, made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve beasts, birds, fishes and man, the lord that was to govern this creation … Not one word was spoken in the beginning that one branch of mankind