“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
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion. — 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
“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
“I think the genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.” — 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
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
“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 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
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
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
“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
“religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy.” — 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
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 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
Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it. — 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
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
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
“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
