John Muir Quotes

'In Praise of Slowness' chronicles the global trend towards deceleration that has come to be known as the Slow Movement. Don't worry, though: it is not a Luddite rant. I love speed. Going fast can be fun, liberating and productive. The problem is that our hunger for speed, for cramming more and more into less and less time, has gone too far.

I like to work fast.

Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?

I've always wanted to do things as fast as possible.

I try to do anything I can to quicken things up.

I learned to value speed in everything I do.

I'm obsessed with speed. I'm always asking myself, 'Why can't we do things faster? Why can't it happen more efficiently? Why is this requiring three meetings instead of one?'

Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.

I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health.

Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.

I like to move quickly. I don't like the nature of television of just sitting around and overshooting.

Nothing easier than to confuse busyness with goodness.

We value the clock for its speed and efficiency. The clock has its place, efficiency has its place, after effectiveness. The symbol of effectiveness is the compass a sense of direction, purpose, vision, perspective, and balance. But the empowerment process itself is not efficient.

I like to have an active set and a fun set. I keep my days to a decent hour; I don't go overtime. Do I beat people up? I beat people up in that they know I like to shoot fast. And they know I like to be efficient. And that I like to leapfrog.

For me, time is everything, because from the time you wake up you have to have your heart and soul in this. You have to work through the day, you have to go to the gym, you have to eat, and yet you have to work as fast as possible to get home and get rest before the next day begins again.

Another cause of confusion, and the resulting feelings of nervousness, hurry, and anxiety, is the absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time.

When you're fast when you're shooting, there are great things that you discover. By being fast you also sometimes get more time to experiment.

Everything is happening too fast for me to process it.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

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

Nothing in business is so valuable as time.

We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp

We call it infectious impatience. That's his hallmark and we are trying to inculcate it in the entire organization. Infectious impatience. So that things not only get done but get done in double quick time.

The man who works 52 weeks in the year does not do his best in any one week of the year, Daniel Guggenheim, onetime head of the greatest smelting and mining family in America, impressed upon me. Real recreation quickens aspiration. The true purpose of recreation is not merely to amuse, not merely to afford pleasure, not merely to kill time, but to increase our fitness, enhance our usefulness, spur achievement.