Believe Quote by Alain de Botton

“The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.” quote by Alain de Botton — Download Open image

“The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.”

Alain de Botton

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Believe Bottom Deserve Ifs Implications Inspiration Merit Motivation Problem

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“To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.”

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“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.”

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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

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“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.”

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Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

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“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…

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“Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements…

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I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful.

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“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.”

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“We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of…

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“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.”

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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

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