Alain de Botton Quotes

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

I admire politicians. It is a really tough assignment, and I would fall at the first fence.

I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

I'm just another guy who thinks he's smarter than he is, in a long line of them.

Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way.

Who think themselves most wise are greatest fools

What gets you out of bed in the morning? This is a question I'm often asked as a politician. It tends to be closely followed by a dozen other questions about what I'll do in 'x' scenario or whether I'll resign if 'y' happens.

Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone

People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.

Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise. Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise.

Nobody knows diddly. They just think they do. And the people that think they know the most know the least.

To be infatuated with the power of one's own intellect is an accident which seldom happens but to those who are remarkable for the want of intellectual power. Whenever Nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.

Pride blinds people to the truth of what they are.

It's a sad thing about politics that most people get power too late, in that they differ from ladies of easy virtue who get their pleasures too early.

Confidence, as opposed, to modesty and distinguished from decent assurance, proceeds from self-opinion, and is occasioned by ignorance and flattery.

Most fools think they are only ignorant.

Anyone who thinks they're indispensible is fooling themselves.

Bonfire of the Vanities: The lesson of that book is, never start believing your own press.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

It is a tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - the less a man knows, the more sure it is that he knows everything.

I was probably being a little cocky, which I do when I feel that I don't know what I'm talking about.

I don't know anything about politics. I wouldn't put too much into my prediction on politics.

We shouldn't accept mediocrity as the best a politician can do.

When I knew nothing, I thought I could do anything.

For one thing, when you're playing as well as I was at the time, you think you can play with anything. That isn't true, of course, but I didn't know it then.