I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It's easy to forget how little strategic thinking ever gets done in the day. Judging by the ideas generated there, our beds… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Many of our ideas of what love is comes from stories... these are extremely powerful shapers of our attitudes towards love, and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he could write so convincingly. His style… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how 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 Image
“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Image
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.” — 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 has not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
