When economist William Beveridge dreamed up the postwar welfare state he wanted to fight five 'giant evils' - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Fast forward 65 years and it seems the last New Labour government grew an Unfair State that fuelled - not fought - one of those evils: idleness.

Jeremy Kyle

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.

Agatha Christie

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

Ambrose Bierce

The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.

Ann Widdecombe

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves.

Anne Baxter

It is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. If anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually.

Anthony Trollope

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

Anton Chekhov

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.

Benjamin Franklin

Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.

Benjamin Jowett

It would indeed be a sad misfortune if man were released from the necessity of work and struggle, for it is a well-known fact that organs which do not function atrophy; and according to the old saying, 'Idleness is the devil's workshop.'

Charles A. Beard

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.

Cyril Connolly

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

Eamon de Valera

Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron.

Ezra Cornell

There was a phase when I would just loaf around, doing nothing. It had put my mom under a lot of stress. I knew her stress stemmed from her love for me, yet I never paid attention to her feelings. When it finally hit me that my idleness was taking a toll on her, I was genuinely sad and depressed.

Farhan Akhtar

Remove idleness from the world and soon the arts of Cupid would perish.

Francois Rabelais

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Franz Kafka

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Friedrich Nietzsche

It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.

George Borrow

It is rather hard to be accused of shiftlessness and idleness when the accuser closes the avenue of labour and industrial pursuits to us.

George H. White

Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.

Hannah More

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

Herman Melville