Wasted attribution

Bertrand Russell did not say "the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time," says the Quote Investigator. I suspected not.

In addition to John Lennon and Bertrand Russell, the saying has been attributed to T. S. Elliot, Soren Kierkegaard, Laurence J. Peter, and others. The attribution to Russell was a mistake that was caused by the misreading of an entry in a quotation book compiled by Peter.

Peter (in his management/self-help bestseller The Peter Principle) was apparently offering his personal gloss on Russell's actual statement in Conquest of Happiness that "The thing that I should wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security," when he (Peter) added parenthetically (The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time). Peter should have added Russell's actual next sentence: "But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals."

In other words, Russell was saying, we imprudently undervalue our time and overvalue money, as a mark of success in what we mistakenly conceive as the great competition of life. "The root of the trouble springs from too much emphasis upon competitive success as the main source of happiness... success can only be one ingredient in happiness, and is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it."

One other very important ingredient is time (which in our terms, after all, is simply experience) enjoyed for its own sake. Time experienced happily is not wasted. You can quote me on that.