“There comes a point in time when humans have an abundance of power [Kraft; strength] at their disposal. Science aims at establishing this slavery of nature.

Then humans acquire leisure: to cultivate themselves into something new, higher. A new aristocracy. It is then that a large number of virtues which are now conditions of existence are superseded.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power (953)

“In some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is a relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic.”

— John Steinbeck & Edward Ricketts, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (chapter 18)

“How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.”

— John Steinbeck & Edward Ricketts, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (chapter 18)

“The impossible class. – Poor, happy and independent! – these things can go together; poor, happy and a slave! – these things can also go together – and I can think of no better news I could give to our factory slaves: provided, that is, they do not feel it to be in general a disgrace to be thus used, and used up, as a part of a machine and as it were a stopgap to fill a hole in human inventiveness! To the devil with the belief that higher payment could lift from them the essence of their miserable condition – I mean their impersonal enslavement! To the devil with the idea of being persuaded that an enhancement of this impersonality within the mechanical operation of a new society could transform the disgrace of slavery into a virtue! To the devil with setting a price on oneself in exchange for which one ceases to be a person and becomes a part of a machine! Are you accomplices in the current folly of the nations – the folly of wanting above all to produce as much as possible and to become as rich as possible? What you ought to do, rather, is to hold up to them the counter-reckoning: how great a sum of inner value is thrown away in pursuit of this external goal! But where is your inner value if you no longer know what it is to breathe freely? if you no longer possess the slightest power over yourselves? if you all too often grow weary of yourselves like a drink that has been left too long standing? if you pay heed to the newspapers and look askance at your wealthy neighbor, made covetous by the rapid rise and fall of power, money and opinions? if you no longer believe in philosophy that wears rags, in the free-heartedness of him without needs? if voluntary poverty and freedom from profession and marriage, such as would very well suit the more spiritual among you, have become to you things to laugh at? If, on the other hand, you have always in your ears the flutings of the Socialist pied-pipers whose design is to enflame you with wild hopes? which bid you to be prepared and nothing further, prepared day upon day, so that you wait and wait for something to happen from outside and in all other respects go on living as you have always lived – until this waiting turns to hunger and thirst and fever and madness, and at last the day of the bestia triumphans [triumphant beast] dawns in all its glory? – In contrast to all this, everyone ought to say to himself: ‘better to go abroad, to seek to become master in new and savage regions of the world and above all master over myself; to keep moving from place to place for just as long as any sign of slavery seems to threaten me; to shun neither adventure nor war and, if the worst should come to the worst, to be prepared for death: all this rather than further to endure this indecent servitude, rather than to go on becoming soured and malicious and conspiratorial!’ This would be the right attitude of mind: the workers of Europe ought henceforth to declare themselves as a class a human impossibility and not, as usually happens, only a somewhat harsh and inappropriate social arrangement; they ought to inaugurate within the European beehive an age of a great swarming-out such as has never been seen before, and through this act of free emigration in the grand manner to protest against the machine, against capital, and against the choice now threatening them of being compelled to become either the slave of the state or the slave of a party of disruption.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (206)

“Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness?

The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.

In war it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long day's work with disgust and must continually tremble for their poor rations.…

It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man's blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavours; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind.

Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”

— Albert Einstein,
Speech to students at CalTech,
The New York Times (report, 1931)

“Let us be lazy in everything,
except in loving and drinking,
except in being lazy.”

— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,
Die Faulheit (Laziness)

“In my opinion, the present manifestations of decadence are explained by the fact that economic and technological developments have highly intensified the struggle for existence, greatly to the detriment of the free development of the individual. But the development of technology means that less and less work is needed from the individual for the satisfaction of the community's needs. A planned division of labor is becoming more and more of a crying necessity, and this division will lead to the material security of the individual. This security and the spare time and energy which the individual will have at his disposal can be turned to the development of his personality. In this way the community may regain its health…”

— Albert Einstein, Society and Personality (from Ideas and Opinions)

“Laziness, now at last I must sing
A short hymn of praise to you. –
Oh –– how –– ti––ring I find it, ––
To –– extol you –– as you deserve!
Still, I shall do my best,
After work, rest is sweet.

Highest boon! Whoever has you,
His untroubled life ––
Ah! –– I –– yawn –– I –– grow weary ––
Well –– please –– forgive me –– then,
If I cannot sing your praises;
You are, you see, preventing me.”

— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,
Lob der Faulheit (In Praise of Laziness)

On seeing this, most people—liberals and even most "leftists"—would think we are silly and childish (anarkitties 🥰): we want to destroy the current politico-economic system and want full unemployment so that we—all of us—could play?? Surely we must be (anar)kitties in our anarcho-fantasyland!

Now… that's a cute picture used in the background of that image: two cute bunnies playing on a beach; and it does seem related to the quote, insofar as it is about "playing".

But it has a deeper meaning!

First, children's play and children's childness itself are regarded by our cancerous, authoritarian politico-economic system, as altogether undesirable, as things that should merely be tolerated because they're unavoidable, but not things of value in themselves. This we oppose, it is a tyrannical system—for children, but as much (actually more) for adults.

That brings us to the second aspect: adults' play. Adults' play is of course even more demonized: what! "adult's play"? What a ridiculous phrase!
But adult's play doesn't necessarily mean just building a little castle on the beach. It could as well be building a house for people to live in. Instead of regarding such tasks as a divine duty, as monotonous "work", why don't we conceive of it as free play? Something people do for their pleasure as well, and not merely because it's necessary? with autonomy and dignity, without any dictatorial authority in the equation?

But that finally brings us to the third point: these two kinds of play are not necessarily distinct. What essential difference is there, after all?
If children find it interesting to build a cute little building with the sand on a beach, might they not find it similarly interesting, when they grow up, to build a bigger building – for people to reside in etc?

Can't we have such a society based on play rather than this boring, monotonous, exhausting, repelling thing called work? It is certainly possible! We can and will make it happen. We will build a new world!

That is what we mean by abolition of work, or by "replacing work with play".

“The modern state, the rule of the bourgeoisie, is based on freedom of labor. … Freedom of labor is free competition of the workers among themselves. … Labor is free in all civilized countries; it is not a matter of freeing labor but of abolishing it.”

[…]

“‘Free activity’…is for the communists the creative manifestation of life arising from the free development of all abilities of the ‘whole fellow’…”

— Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (Ch. 3 – 1. I. §6. A, B)

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
The Sorrows of Young Werther (I. May 17)