Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton, FRSLis a Swiss-born, British-based self-help philosopher and public speaker. His books and television programmes discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. At 23, he published Essays in Love, which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life, Status Anxietyand The Architecture of Happiness...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth20 December 1969
building-up wave matchsticks
Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.
falling-in-love elude-us self
Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.
nice church
I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.
writing use naivety
I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.
communication ideas challenges
I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
successful bombarded-by priorities
Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.
philosophy book sound
It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.
war land two
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.
beautiful religious thinking
We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.
want married fascinating
What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
writing fiction uncomfortable
I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel.
interesting hegel terrible
Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
people looks attention
We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
children father grew
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.