Tom Hodgkinson Quotes & Sayings (Page 7)

“If you can find a way to make a living doing something you enjoy, or a range of things that you enjoy, then it can scarcely be called work.”

“What seems extraordinary is that the richest countries in the world, in terms of economic output, are the ones where we work hardest.”

“All poets are idlers, even if all idlers are not poets.”

“Although I played a lot of computer games in my 20s, now I have children of my own, I hate them with a passion.”

“It's pretty obvious that Western lifestyles which rely on gigantic amounts of electricity use up far more resources than a subsistence-based life. A little more poverty would be a good thing.”

“We can live frugally. The less you work, the less you spend and the more time you have for loafing about. But when I put forward this simple notion, I was greeted with a volley of resentment.”

“If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.”

“In both word and deed, one of the greatest idlers of all time was John Lennon. In his songs we see repeated defences of simply lying around doing nothing.”

“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.”

“Of all the depressing abuses of language in business, there is none that gets me so incensed as the rampant overuse of the word 'passionate' in company slogans, marketing blurbs, mission statements and on the sides of vans.”