When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIt is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
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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.
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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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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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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
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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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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
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