Quote

to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Behind
Complexity
Switching
Already
Turning
Unlearn
Means
Acknowledge
Reflexes
Light
Apart
Mechanisms
Take
Everyday
Patiently
Mean
Mystery
Forcing
Believe
Behinds
Gestures
Like
Design
Mechanism
Stupefying

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.
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I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.
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Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
Alain de Botton
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
Alain de Botton
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What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
Alain de Botton
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
Alain de Botton
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
Alain de Botton
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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de Botton
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I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
Alain de Botton
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
Alain de Botton
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Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
Alain de Botton