# Quote — Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

> The unremitting division of labour resulted in admirable levels of productivity. The company’s success appeared to bear out the principles of efficiency laid down at the turn of the twentieth century by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorized that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favour of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields. In an ideal Paretan economy, jobs would be ever more finely subdivided to allow for the accumulation of complex skills, which would then be traded among workers. … But however great the economic advantages of segmenting the elements of an afternoon’s work into a range of forty-year-long careers, there was reason to wonder about the unintended side effects of doing so. In particular, one felt tempted to ask … how meaningful the lives might feel as a result.

- Author: [Alain de Botton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton.md)
- Book: [The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Pleasures_and_Sorrows_of_Work_(2009)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/the-unremitting-division

## More from this book

> To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one’s ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

p. 237 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/to-look-at-the.md)

> Symons … remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited—long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms—what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.

p. 113 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/symons-remarked-that.md)

> The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left … having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.

p. 168 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/the-pre-scientific-age.md)