Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has worked life out… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don't immediately have to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Some of the reason why we marry the wrong people is that we don't really understand ourselves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 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
We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It's almost a blessing when we meet people who naturally want to do the sort of things that are in high demand… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Trying to be a sort of intellectual in the public arena is very irritating to people. They think, 'Why is this bugger… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The greatest compliment I get about my writing is when people say, 'How did you know so much about me?' And of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity -… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has meant people who have written dissertations on obscure… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them? — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone… — 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
