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Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
Alain de Botton
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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Politics
Difficult
Feel
Task
Feels
Generally
People
Tasks
Convinced
Aren
Quite
More quotes by Alain de Botton
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
Alain de Botton
When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
Alain de Botton
The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
Alain de Botton
We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
Alain de Botton
Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
Alain de Botton
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
Alain de Botton
We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
Alain de Botton
Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
Alain de Botton
Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
Alain de Botton
Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as mushy.
Alain de Botton
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
Alain de Botton
All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
Alain de Botton
The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
Alain de Botton
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
Alain de Botton
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
Alain de Botton
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
We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.
Alain de Botton
The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.
Alain de Botton
It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
Alain de Botton
What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
Alain de Botton
