In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“I think the genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, raid, and learn… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the balance sheet. The doers are selling… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The challenge facing atheists is how to reverse the process of religious colonization: how to separate ideas and rituals from the religious… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There's something called religion, and it was invented a long time ago by people who felt very out of control with their… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The man who shouts every time he loses his house keys is betraying a beautiful but rash faith in a universe in… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“An atheist may, of course, also feel clean after taking a bath and dirty without one, but the mikveh ritual, associating outer… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“attempting to understand what could have eroded our sense of community, an important role has traditionally been accorded to the privatization of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“religions merit our attention for their sheer conceptual ambition; for changing the world in a way that few secular institutions ever have.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“religions merit our attention for their sheer conceptual ambition; for changing the world in a way that few secular institutions ever have.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society’s most… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Secular society has been unfairly impoverished by the loss of an array of practices and themes which atheists typically find it impossible… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Our inner lives must be lent a structure and our best thoughts reinforced to counter the continuous pull of distraction and disintegration.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone;… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“In a world beset by fundamentalists of both believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Religions have always been clearly on to this psycho-therapeutic score. For hundreds of years in the West, Christian art had a very… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I tell my children what I think myself: That religion is not necessarily convincing, but it is still interesting and not to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Does what is praised becomes better? Does an emerald become worse if it isn't praised? And what a gold, ivory, a flower or a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
![“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.” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/9a7/alain-de-botton-221_accepting_it-s-as-though-either-you-accept-religio_2768643.jpg)
