The only way to avoid the law of labor is through sin: either by committing violence, by participating in it, or by flattery and servility before violence.
It is better to lose one’s life than to flatter the ignoble. Poverty is better than the luxury obtained by serving the rich. To not stand before the doors of the rich and to not speak with the voice of a beggar—that is the best life.
— Hitopadesha
A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
— Thoreau
Once upon a time there lived two brothers, one served the king and the other lived by the labor of his hands. The rich brother said to the poor:
“Why don’t you enter the service of the king? You would be delivered from the burden of labor.”
To this the poor brother replied:
“And why don’t you labor, so that you could deliver yourself from the burden of humiliation? The sages said that it is better to eat the bread obtained by your own labor in peace than to wear a golden belt and be someone else’s servant. It is better to use your hands to mix lime and clay than to fold them over your chest as a mark of servitude. It is better to be satisfied with a piece of bread than to bow one’s back like a slave.”
— Saadi
However fine the clothes given by the king may be, your own plain clothes are better, and even though the dishes of the rich are delicious, a piece of bread from your own table is better.
— Saadi
It is better, much better for every person to take a rope, go to a forest, gather firewood and sell a bundle of firewood to buy food, than to ask other people for it. If people do not give you food, then you will feel ashamed and annoyed, and if they do, it will be even worse: you will be indebted to those who gave it.
— Muhammad
To those who do not work the land, the land says: “Because you do not work me with your left and right hand, you will forever stand together with all the beggars at a stranger’s door, you will forever live off what the rich discard.”
— Zarathustra
People live well when they are convinced that a life of labor is more respectable than a life of idleness—by living according to this belief they therefore value and respect other people.
If you do not want to work, your only options are violence or humiliation.
