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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
Aside
Obsessed
Bottom
Numbers
Lines
Beauty
Become
Truth
Knocked

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Idleness allows you to turn a situation from boredom to pleasure.
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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.
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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 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.
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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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I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.
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Truly, the bench is a boon to idlers. Whoever first came up with the idea is a genius: free public resting places where you can take time out from the bustle and brouhaha of the city, and simply sit and watch and reflect.
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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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There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m.
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Faffing of course does not fit the programme. We are supposed to be busy, productive citizens.
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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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It will soon be difficult to put up a shelf without a degree in shelf putting up.
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Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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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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.
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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
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Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Life is about recapturing lost freedoms.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
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Part of this individualism is you feel this pressure that you alone have to conquer the world, and if you don't work all the hours God gives then you start feeling really guilty. If you can stop feeling guilty, then I think it's easier to start doing what you want to do.
Tom Hodgkinson