Alain de Botton Quotes

It's more important to know your weaknesses than your strengths.

I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Everything I'm saying shouldn't be taken so serious. I'm playing, but at the same token, I'm acknowledging that I'm not always the perfect man; I'm not always doing the right things. That's who I am. I'm working to be better.

I think I'm a pretty open book. We're all a work in progress, and I'm not ashamed to say that I don't have it all together - I don't really think anyone does.

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

One of my problems is to find the self.

I'm trying to figure myself out through my movies. Whether it's big stuff like what we're doing here, or little stuff like, 'Why aren't I happier?' With every film I feel like I'm apologising for something. I feel I'm most successful when I'm looking for something that embarrasses me about my character that I'd like to expose.

All the work I do is personal, so the good stuff and the bad stuff that you see in there is all good stuff and bad stuff that I have, and part of the journey, for me, has been to embrace these things that I find embarrassing about myself: my stubbornness, my ego, my maudlin-ness - these things that I see myself do, and I go, 'Oh, David, stop that!'

I'm pretty self-aware, and I am an embarrassingly flawed human being in a ton of ways.

The better you understand yourself the less cause you will find to love yourself.

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. Yet from this lesson thou will learn to avoid the frog's foolish ambition of swelling to rival the bigness of the ox.

For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.

Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.

In terms of my life, I guess I want to share whatever I've learned really, which is basically one thing: know yourself, look for yourself, know what to look for, cherish it, be honest, be authentic, even if it hurts your feelings. That's not bad.

I wish I could say confidently that pacing remains my weak point, if you could talk about your own stuff without sounding like you're self-obsessed. But I think you kind of have to be.

I showed myself a lesser version of myself that night, and I’m glad I learned from it.

I am still a person with a sense of superficiality that I'm trying to challenge.

I'm very observant and very instinctive. In life, you have to have the vulnerability to accept when you are to blame. And I do have that, and I am open enough to say it.

It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this age. But I long ago realized I was secretly sincere.

I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one's strengths and weaknesses are.

Compare yourself to yourself and say, 'How can I be better? How can I be the real me?'

I know I'm not perfect.

I've certainly had a lot of experiences in my life where I was much too self-centered.