Latest Tom Hodgkinson Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Writing a book is a brilliant thing because once you've finished it, you've done it, and there's the potential for it to go on earning you a living without you doing any more work on it. It's absolutely ideal for an idler.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Book, Writing, Idlers

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• 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.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Thinking, People, Trying

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• There are a lot of little tricks you can do to inject a bit more time into the day. Most important is limiting yourself to a 40 hour week, not working 50 hours or 60 or 70. It's just crazy. It's actually irresponsible to you and irresponsible to your family and friends. Why should your employer's profits be more important than your own family? You're not even going to get any of the profits - all you get is not losing your job. It's a very negative system.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Jobs, Crazy, Important

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• 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.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Philosophy, Believe, Book

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• 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

  Thinking, Conquer The World, Giving

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• I don't put much faith in the political system because it's a question of how are you going to run capitalism, not how are we going to develop a different system to capitalism.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Running, Political, Different

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• I like the idea of becoming [fairly] good at lots of things rather than very good at just one thing. So it would be nice to be okay at the guitar or at the piano, a reasonable cook, perhaps able to fix your car or do some basic carpentry, and be able to write the odd article. Rather than being super good at one tiny thing, to be kind of average at lots of things. It might mean that you have a more kind of enjoyable, complete life.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Nice, Mean, Writing

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• Little things like making clothes, baking bread, cooking, even useless things like bird-watching, sketching flowers, playing guitar in the home - that sort of time is gone. And the time we have? We're so exhausted, we want to let ourselves get sucked in to the escape world of TV. I'm speaking from experience; I'm not above all this.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Flower, Home, Guitar

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• 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.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Thinking, Asking Questions, Government

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• We have an idea that if something we're doing isn't actually earning money, or spending it, then it's completely worthless. But if you start to work less, you can actually start to give more to society, but on a local level.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Ideas, Giving, Levels

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• What I've found in working less is you start to get a bit more involved in the more real politics, which is local politics that affect what's going on in your own community.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Real, Community, Found

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• I've found that there isn't any correlation whatsoever between the hours put in and the quality of what comes out. Most of the Beatles' songs probably originated in about five minutes.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Song, Quality, Hours

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Gone, Has Beens

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• 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.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Writing, Garden, Things In Life

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• 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.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Attitude, Ideas, Age

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• 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."

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Dream, Thinking, Want

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.

• What seems extraordinary is that the richest countries in the world, in terms of economic output, are the ones where we work hardest. You would have thought that the end of all this innovation, technological advancement, and financial wizardry should be to create less work, not more of it.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Country, Hard Work, Innovation

  "How To Be Idle: An Interview with Tom Hodgkinson". Interview with Katie Renz, www.motherjones.com. June 8, 2005.