Eros and Civilization

"Of all things, hard work has become a virtue instead of the curse it was always advertised to be by our remote ancestors... Our children should be prepared to bring their children up so they won't have to work as a neurotic necessity. The necessity to work is a neurotic symptom. It is a crutch. It is an attempt to make oneself feel valuable even though there is no particular need for one's working."

--C. B. Chisholm in the panel discussion "The Psychiatry of Enduring Peace and Social Progress," in Psychiatry, Vol. IX, No. 1 (1946), p. 31.

Quoted in Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud, 1955, p. 202.