Samuel Johnson Quotes
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
Johnson, Samuel. The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, 1825.
See Robert Burton {596290} for an earlier view with which Jefferson was probably familiar.
Mormons in later years found this principle difficult to enforce where there was unemployment and workers were idle through no fault of their own. The local Mormon churches were very active in encouraging wealthier Mormons to hire those who were unemployed.
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".
