Tom Hodgkinson Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Tom Hodgkinson quote about:
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“The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“In a world where you are constantly asked to be 'committed,' it is liberating to give yourself the license to be a dilettante. Commit to nothing. Try everything.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“I would like to propose slow cycling. Commute by bike. At a stroke, you remove the need for and absurd cost of public transport. Cycling is almost completely free. There is no longer any need for the gym as you get fit by cycling. And you can go at your own pace.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“If Adam and Eve were not hunter-gatherers, then they were certainly gatherers. But, then, consumer desire, or self-embitterment, or the 'itch,' as Schopenhauer called it, appeared in the shape of the serpent. This capitalistic monster awakens in Adam and Eve the possibility that things could be better. Instantly, they are cast out of the garden and condemned to a life of toil, drudgery, and pain. Wants supplanted needs, and things have been going downhill ever since.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“...[W]e should be mucking about all the time, because mucking about is enjoying life for its own sake, now, and not in preparation for an imaginary future. It's obvious that the mirth-filled man, the cheerful soul, the childish adult is the one who has least to fear from life.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“When stuck years ago in a job I hated, my only friend was the public bench. As the tedious mornings dragged on, how I would long for the lunch hour, when I would be able to escape the torture of the office and stroll over to the churchyard and into the comforting wooden embrace of one of its benches.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“These days we seem more bound to our bosses than ever before. We even identify our own selves with the jobs we do: 'What do you do?' is the first question we ask each other at parties, as if a job title could express a fundamental truth about our personality.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“The world's richest half billion people - that's about seven per cent of the global population - are responsible for fifty per cent of the world's emissions.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“The siesta provides a delightful detour from the working day and it also has a practical value as far as productivity is concerned. Winston Churchill had a good long siesta every day during the Second World War, and he said it was the thing that enabled him to cope with the pressure.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Punk was a protest against work and against boredom. It was a sign of life, a rant, a scream, a rejection of bourgeois morals. But have things improved since then? Arguably, they've got worse.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“My hope is that flexible working and varying shift patterns will give workers a taste for idling and that they will gradually demand greater reductions in the length of the working week.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Management gurus in general are, I think, best avoided. All too often they reduce your working life to a list of rules to be followed. Targets are aimed at. Goals kicked at. You then break the rules or forget them and, hey presto, you start beating yourself up.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Long weekends at festivals, short weeks at home, all summer long: now that is surely preferable to the immense cost and headache of the nuclear family holiday in the sun?”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Self-importance is a trap, because the moment we start to think that we actually matter is the moment when things start to go wrong. The truth is that you are supremely unimportant and nothing matters. All of man's striving is for nothing; all effort is wasted. To realize that everything is meaningless is tremendously liberating, since it then leaves us completely free to create our own lives and ignore the plans that others have for us.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“When people say " I just don't have enough time " they mean " I prioritized something else.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“It will soon be difficult to put up a shelf without a degree in shelf putting up.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“We need to claim lunch back. It is our natural right. It has been stolen from us by our rulers. The fear that keeps you chained to your desk, staring at your screen, does not serve your spirit. Lunch is a time to forget about being sensible, practical, efficient. A proper lunch should be spiritually as well as physically nourishing. Cosy, convivial, a treat; lunch is for loafers.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“In the West, we have become addicted to work. Americans now work the longest hours in the world. And the result is not health, wealth and wisdom, but rather a lot of anxiety, a lot of ill health and a lot of debt.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“I've never understood activity holidays since we seem to have far too much activity in our daily lives as it is. Find a culture where loafing is the order of the day and where they don't understand our need to be constantly doing things. Find somewhere you can have a hammock holiday.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“When you go for a walk, take seeds with you, poppies, rainbow chard, rocket. Plant them among the weeds in patches of wasteland. See what happens.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson -
“Being good to people is the only insurance policy you need.”
-- Tom Hodgkinson