Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 6

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• The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.

  Alain de Botton

  Motivation, Believe, Inspiration

  16 Copy quote

• We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

  Alain de Botton

  Home, Mind, Important

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• In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, World, Devotion

  "What art museums should learn from Christianity". Article by Alain de Botton, www.abc.net.au. February 22, 2012.

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• There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Missing, Being Weird

  Twitter post from Jul 14, 2017

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• The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

  Alain de Botton

  Children, Parent, Mind

  Twitter post from Dec 11, 2013

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• The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

  Alain de Botton

  Practice, Ideas, Everyday

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• It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

  Alain de Botton

  Taken, Century, Has Beens

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

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• Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

  Alain de Botton

  Sex, Believe, Rejection

  Alain de Botton, The School of Life (2012). “How To Think More About Sex”, p.135, Pan Macmillan

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• Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

  Alain de Botton

  Crazy, Maturity, Knowing

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• True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.

  Alain de Botton

  Majority, Stem, Reasoning

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

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• It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Appreciation, Pain

  Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.15, Penguin UK

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• One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

  Alain de Botton

  Gratitude, Grateful, Sight

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• A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

  Alain de Botton

  Travel, Information, Useless

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• After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

  Alain de Botton

  Men, Age, Strive

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• Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

  Alain de Botton

  Memories, Anticipation, Instruments

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• If optimism is important, it's because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope!

  Alain de Botton

  Good Life, Views, Skills

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• It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

  Alain de Botton

  Motivation, Inspiration, Careers

  "A kinder, gentler philosophy of success". TED Talk, www.ted.com. July, 2009.

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• Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.

  Alain de Botton

  Ideas, Cynical, Feelings

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• Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, Good Thinking

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• Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.

  Alain de Botton

  Voice, Priorities, Soul

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.190, Vintage

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• We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

  Alain de Botton

  Intelligent, Insanity, Disease

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.125, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.

  Alain de Botton

  Age, Aging, This Too Shall Pass

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• We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

  Alain de Botton

  Views, Quality, Divergent

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.9, Vintage

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• I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

  Alain de Botton

  Laughter, Optimistic, Laughing

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

  Alain de Botton

  Hurt, Light, Looks

  Alain de Botton (2012). “Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion”, p.38, Penguin UK

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