Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Most business meetings involve one party elaborately suppressing a wish to shout at the other: 'just give us the money'.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“There are two ways to make people richer, reasoned Rousseau: to give them more money or to restrain their desires.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversity of opinion, the values of a given… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though we are often… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subjects really matter, for the sake of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob… — 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
“What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Uniting the many challenges to the commercial meritocratic ideal is a threefold plea, that we cease investing with moral connotations something as… — 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
“The business card does not fully reflect who we are. We are being judged, we feel, in a humiliating way. We feel… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We are from a purely financial point of view greatly more generous than our ancestors ever were, surrendering up to half of… — 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
