Alain de Botton quotes

Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born British philosopher, author, and television presenter. His work explores topics like love, philosophy, art, and the everyday challenges of modern life. He has founded The School of Life, aiming to make philosophy practical and accessible to a wider audience. Here are 177 of his quotes:

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to. (Alain de Botton)
The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them fully developed in someone else. View quote
Alain de Botton
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge. View quote
Alain de Botton
In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one. View quote
Alain de Botton
Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities. View quote
Alain de Botton
To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity. View quote
Alain de Botton
We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world. View quote
Alain de Botton
The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left... having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings. View quote
Alain de Botton
That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what-or who-is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy. View quote
Alain de Botton
It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public. View quote
Alain de Botton
We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful. (Alain de Botton)
The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us. View quote
Alain de Botton
It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is. View quote
Alain de Botton
Not everyone is worth listening to. View quote
Alain de Botton
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough. View quote
Alain de Botton
True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning. View quote
Alain de Botton
It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries. View quote
Alain de Botton
There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most. View quote
Alain de Botton
Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style. View quote
Alain de Botton
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life. View quote
Alain de Botton
Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle. (Alain de Botton)
Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them? View quote
Alain de Botton
Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval. View quote
Alain de Botton
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence. View quote
Alain de Botton
By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world. View quote
Alain de Botton