Human Productivity Quotes

The rest and the spell of sleep in the middle of the day refresh the human frame far more than a long night. We were not made by Nature to work, or even to play, from eight o'clock in the morning till midnight. We throw a strain upon our system which is unfair and improvident. For every purpose of business or pleasure, mental or physical, we ought to break our days and our marches into two.

We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.

For most purposes, a man with a machine is better than a man without a machine.

All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men.

All that is great in man comes through work; and civilization is its product.

To the gods belong power, and to us the work of our hands.

In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill . . .

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living.

To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted. Even things in themselves not positively advantageous, sometimes become so, by their tendency to provoke exertion. Every new scene, which is opened to the busy nature of man to rouse and exert itself, is the addition of a new energy to the general stock of effort.

I think a lot of jobs, with that additional artificial intelligence, we can augment human capabilities and impact.

Man's record upon this wild world is the record of work, and of work alone.

We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision. What if humans designed products and systems that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?