Creativity Quote by Pablo Picasso

Picasso’s joke lands because it treats “necessity” like a punchline, not a virtue. Work, he admits, is unavoidable - but the second sentence flips the moral: if work is so natural, why did we need a machine to drag us into it? The alarm clock becomes the perfect symbol of modern discipline: a small, shrill device that turns time into a supervisor and the bedroom into a factory floor.

The intent isn’t to romanticize laziness. It’s to expose how “necessity” often means “systems we built and now obey.” Picasso lived through the industrial acceleration of Europe, two world wars, and the tightening schedules of modern life; he also made a career in a field where “work” doesn’t look like punching a clock, even when it’s relentless. Artists are supposed to be inspired, but they’re also supposed to produce, and capitalism loves nothing more than packaging creativity into deadlines, markets, and morning routines. The alarm clock is the domesticated whip.

Subtext: human beings didn’t just invent tools to meet needs; we invent needs that justify the tools. Calling work a necessity is the story society tells to make coercion feel like common sense. Picasso’s line punctures that story with a sly shrug: if we truly wanted to work, we wouldn’t have to be jolted awake to do it.

It’s classic Picasso in miniature - irreverent, modern, suspicious of pieties. He reduces an entire ideology of productivity to one irritating object on the nightstand, reminding you that “normal life” is often just engineered compliance with better branding.