Carl Honore Quotes

#1. The time has come to challenge our obsession with doing everything more quickly.

Carl Honore

#2. Spending more time with friends and family costs nothing. Nor does walking, cooking, meditating, making love, reading or eating dinner at the table instead of in front of the television. Simply resisting the urge to hurry is free.

Carl Honore

#3. In our hedonistic age, the Slow movement has a marketing ace up its sleeve: it peddles pleasure. The central tenet of the Slow philosophy is taking the time to do things properly, and thereby enjoy them more.

Carl Honore

#4. Then there is the curse of multi-tasking. Doing two things at once seems so clever, so efficient, so modern. And yet what it often means is doing two things not very well. Like many people, I read the paper while watching TV - and find that I get less out of both.

Carl Honore

#5. Technology enables us to work every minute of every day from any place on the planet.

Carl Honore

#6. The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It's less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it.

Carl Honore

#7. Slow travel now rivals the fly-to-Barcelona-for-lunch culture. Advocates savour the journey, travelling by train or boat or bicycle, or even on foot, rather than crammed into an airplane. They take time to plug into the local culture instead of racing through a list of tourist traps.

Carl Honore

#8. We've got 942 friends on Facebook, but when was the last time we spent an afternoon sitting in High Park with one of them?

Carl Honore

#9. We're so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives - on our health, our diet, our work, our relationships, the environment and our community.

Carl Honore

#10. Instead of thinking deeply, or letting an idea simmer in the back of the mind, our instinct now is to reach for the nearest sound bite.

Carl Honore

#11. There is so much to be gained from investing more time in what we eat. Buying fresh ingredients means knowing where your food comes from and what's in it.

Carl Honore

#12. Your best ideas, those eureka moments that turn the world upside down, seldom come when you're juggling emails, rushing to meet the 5 P.M. deadline or straining to make your voice heard in a high-stress meeting. They come when you're walking the dog, soaking in the bath or swinging in a hammock.

Carl Honore

#13. Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn't it, to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives instead of actually living them; that we're living the fast life instead of the good life. And I think, for many people, that wake-up call takes the form of an illness.

Carl Honore

#14. Everywhere, people are discovering that doing things more slowly often means doing them better and enjoying them more. It means living life instead of rushing through it. You can apply this to everything from food to parenting to work.

Carl Honore

#15. Slower, it turns out, often means better - better health, better work, better business, better family life, better exercise, better cuisine and better sex.

Carl Honore

#16. Slow parents understand that childrearing should not be a cross between a competitive sport and product-development. It is not a project; it's a journey. Slow parenting is about giving kids lots of love and attention with no conditions attached.

Carl Honore

#17. In this media-drenched, data-rich, channel-surfing, computer-gaming age, we have lost the art of doing nothing, of shutting out the background noise and distractions, of slowing down and simply being alone with our thoughts.

Carl Honore

#18. Aficionados of Slow design and Slow fashion use ethical and green materials to make objects - furniture, clothes, jewellery - that lift the spirit and last a lifetime rather than one catwalk season.

Carl Honore

#19. Speed can give you a great feeling of excitement, and there is a place for that in life and in music," says Kliemt. "But you have to draw the line, and not always use speed. It is stupid to drink a glass of wine quickly. And it is stupid to play Mozart too fast.

Carl Honore

#20. I guess I went into journalism to save the world. I always felt through writing that I wanted to rotate the world slightly.

Carl Honore

#21. In a world where so much happens through computer screens, making a meal by hand, touching the raw materials, feeling your way through a recipe, tasting, adjusting, engaging all the senses, can be a soothing release.

Carl Honore

#22. I've teamed up with one of the headmasters at Eton College, and we're spearheading a kind of 'slow education movement in Britain'. It's based on this idea of moving away from the fast-food approach to learning and going to something deeper, more woolly, harder to measure.

Carl Honore

#23. Doing two things at once seems so clever, so efficient, so modern. And yet what it often means is doing two things not very well.

Carl Honore

#24. I never wanted to be a public figure. I feel that I always have to dampen down people's expectations. They expect me to be an oracle, wave a magic wand, sprinkle some slow, sparkly dust on them, to make everything all right.

Carl Honore

#25. The journey that 'In Praise of Slowness' has made since publication shows how far this message resonates. The book has been translated into more than 30 languages. It appears on reading lists from business schools to yoga retreats. Rabbis, priests and imams have quoted from it in their sermons.

Carl Honore

#26. By slowing down at the right moments, people find that they do everything better: They eat better; they make love better; they exercise better; they work better; they live better.

Carl Honore

#27. Our impatience is so implacable that, as actress-author Carrie Fisher quipped, even "instant gratification takes too long.

Carl Honore

#28. To me, Slow parenting is about bringing balance into the home. Children need to strive and struggle and stretch themselves, but that does not mean childhood should be a race. Slow parents give their children plenty of time and space to explore the world on their own terms.

Carl Honore

#29. We used to dial; now we speed dial. We used to read; now we speed read. We used to walk; now we speed walk. And of course, we used to date, and now we speed date. And even things that are by their very nature slow - we try and speed them up, too.

Carl Honore

#30. This is where our obsession with going fast and saving time leads. To road rage, air rage, shopping rage, relationship rage, office rage, vacation rage, gym rage. Thanks to speed, we live in the age of rage.

Carl Honore

#31. Whether it's mending a failing company, fighting corruption, tackling disease, or rebuilding a marriage, the hardest problems defy just-add-water remedies. Indeed, slapping on a Band-Aid when surgery is needed usually just makes things worse.

Carl Honore

#32. I could be working 300 hours a week. I just say 'no.' The power of slow is the power of no. I can't go to every party I get invited to. I can't do every work thing.

Carl Honore

#33. Our obsession with speed, with cramming more and more into every minute, means that we race through life instead of actually living it. Our health, diet and relationships suffer. We make mistakes at work. We struggle to relax, to enjoy the moment, even to get a decent night's sleep.

Carl Honore

#34. Research has shown that time pressure leads to tunnel vision and that people think more creatively when they are calm, unhurried and free from stress and distractions. We all know this from experience.

Carl Honore

#35. The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections
with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds

Carl Honore

#36. Warnings about children being overscheduled, racing from one enriching activity to the next, first surfaced in the early 20th century.

Carl Honore

#37. To help staff recharge and think better, companies are setting aside quiet places to relax, practise yoga or even take a nap. With hi-tech giants such as Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft underlining the pitfalls of being 'always on,' firms are imposing speed limits on the information superhighway.

Carl Honore

#38. Fast isn't turning us into Masters of the Universe, It's turning us into Cheech and Chong.

Carl Honore

#39. Much better to do fewer things and have time to make the most of them.

Carl Honore

#40. Smaller families mean we have more time and money to lavish on each child. Parents are more anxious because small families give them less experience of parenting and put their genetic eggs in fewer baskets.

Carl Honore

#41. The greatest thinkers in history certainly knew the value of shifting the mind into low gear. Charles Darwin described himself as a slow thinker. Einstein was famous for spending ages staring into space in his office at Princeton University.

Carl Honore

#42. When it comes to extracurricular activities, many children are getting too much of a good thing.

Carl Honore

#43. I'm not a Luddite at all. I love all this stuff. I look at all the gadgets that come out and I think, 'Oh, this fix works for me. But the rest don't.' I'm not genuflecting in front of the God of Newness.

Carl Honore