Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge. — 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
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
It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Becoming a writer wasn't a choice (there would have been far more worthwhile things to do); it was the best, most fruitful… — 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
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
Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The problem with airports is that we go there when we need to catch a plane - and because it's so difficult… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we… — 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
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
I'm not an academic philosopher, and don't agree with the way the universities approach the subject. I'm a philosopher only in the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are able to make… — 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
Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher. Partially, Katie Price's philosophy is one… — 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
“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
![“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just…” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c16/alain-de-botton-221_altered_t-he-unsympathetic-assessments-we-make-o_2167022.jpg)
