dots-menu
×

Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  John Smith (c. 1580–1631)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 2031
AUTHOR: John Smith (c. 1580–1631)
QUOTATION: You must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not worke shall not eate (except by sicknesse he be disabled:) for the labours of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintaine an hundred and fiftie idle loyterers.
ATTRIBUTION: Captain JOHN SMITH, advice to his company when he was governor of Jamestown Colony, Virginia, 1608.—Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles, vol. 1, chapter 10, p. 174 (1907).

The preceding paragraph notes that “six houres each day was spent in worke, the rest in Pastime and merry exercises, but the untowardnesse of the greatest number caused the President [to] advise as followeth.”
SUBJECTS: Work