Those who actually made the biggest contributions deliberately aspired to not have to work – in their eyes, if you had to work, you were not successful. And it was exactly this leisure-focused life, and the time it provided for philosophy, games, literature, family, and sports, that allowed culture to blossom. Leisure, as Bertrand Russell would later write, was “essential to civilization.” And according to one of the Ancient Greeks, Aristotle, leisure was not only essential, it was the highest ideal anyone could aspire to. Work was a necessity. But leisure was noble.
