Alain de Botton Quotes, Space Quotes, Community Quotes

On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Space Quotes , Community Quotes

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Argument Quotes

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , War Quotes , Land Quotes

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Desire Quotes , Stronger Quotes

The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Drawing Quotes , Looks Quotes

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Exotic Quotes

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Danger Quotes

Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Achievement Quotes , Doe Quotes

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Views Quotes , Luxury Quotes

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Suffering Quotes , Behaviour Quotes

You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Long Quotes , Alcohol Quotes

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Children Quotes , Father Quotes

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Vision Quotes , Use Quotes

Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Running Quotes , Animal Quotes

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , People Quotes , Tasks Quotes

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , People Quotes , Personality Quotes

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Obvious Things Quotes

Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Heart Quotes , Medicine Quotes

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Emotional Quotes

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Despair Quotes , Events Quotes