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We have become so obsessed by numbers and by bottom lines that beauty and truth has been knocked aside.

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Newcastle
Truth
Knocked
Aside
Obsessed
Bottom
Numbers
Lines
Beauty
Become

More quotes by Tom Hodgkinson

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Bosses should sanction the nap rather than expect workers to power on all day without repose. They might even find that workers' happiness - or what management types refer to as employee satisfaction results - might improve.
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We bore ourselves in order to earn money that we'll later spend on trying to de-bore ourselves
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Benjamin Franklin and the whole idea of a new attitude to money: Time is money. He invented that idea. Before that, time wasn't money in the same way in the medieval age it was regarded as sinful for money to be the object of your life.
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The way to stop feeling guilty is to read stuff - I'm not saying my book, but works by Bertrand Russell or Oscar Wilde, people who weren't losers but who didn't believe in the work ethic, and argued this thing about guilt or wrote philosophy about idleness.
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There's nothing new about anti-work philosophy. History is dotted with individuals and groups who decided that laziness was next to godliness and work was a waste of time.
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There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m.
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Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap.
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One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?
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Idleness allows you to turn a situation from boredom to pleasure.
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Alongside my no email policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.
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The best thing that can happen to anybody is to be sacked or made redundant because often that's when you think, I don't want to become one of the living dead. I haven't got anything to lose, now I can start to follow my own dreams.
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Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked.
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I think it's good to look at how people lived before, and then take the best bits of that culture and try to mix it in with your own.
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The accusation 'unprofessional' means 'You did not behave like a machine today.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience.
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Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.
Tom Hodgkinson
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It takes a while to master the art of hammock-lounging. At first I could only manage five minutes or so before I thought I ought to get out and go and help a child learn how to swim or something. But after observing the Mexicans' capability for staring into space for hours on end, I decided to put in some proper practice.
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The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.
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I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic!
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Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane experiences which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That's not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in.
Tom Hodgkinson