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Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert Orben

"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in"

About this Quote

Orben’s line lands because it treats leisure like a punchline about labor, not a scented candle about self-care. “Nothing to do” is the fantasy we sell ourselves, but “all day to do it in” slyly admits that even idleness gets scheduled, measured, and performed. The joke is a neat inversion: vacations promise freedom from obligation, yet we still crave a container for that freedom, a calendar block big enough to justify doing nothing without guilt.

The intent is entertainer-clean but culturally pointed. Orben came up in mid-century American comedy, when the postwar boom made the paid vacation a mainstream aspiration and advertising turned “time off” into a purchasable lifestyle. His phrasing mirrors that era’s office logic: productivity isn’t erased on vacation, it’s simply redirected. You’re still optimizing, but the KPI is relaxation. “All day” sounds indulgent until you hear the echo of a workday, the unspoken nine-to-five shadowing the beach chair.

Subtext: modern leisure is haunted by the need to be allowed to rest. If you truly had “nothing to do,” you wouldn’t need the alibi of a vacation to do it. The line also pokes at status. Having time to waste, openly, is a luxury; announcing you’ll spend “all day” doing nothing signals you’ve escaped the moral economy where busyness equals virtue.

It’s a one-sentence critique of hustle culture before hustle culture had a name, delivered with the light touch that makes the indictment go down easy.

Quote Details

TopicVacation
Source
Later attribution: Humorous Wit (Djamel Ouis, 2020) modern compilationISBN: 9781782225829 · ID: c7zXDwAAQBAJ
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in . Robert Orben A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours . John B. Priestley Unemployment insurance is a pre - paid vacation for ...
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Orben, Robert. (2026, February 15). A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-vacation-is-having-nothing-to-do-and-all-day-to-62910/

Chicago Style
Orben, Robert. "A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in." FixQuotes. February 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-vacation-is-having-nothing-to-do-and-all-day-to-62910/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in." FixQuotes, 15 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-vacation-is-having-nothing-to-do-and-all-day-to-62910/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Robert Orben (March 4, 1927 - February 2, 2023) was a Entertainer from USA.

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