Alain de Botton Quotes

Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place?

We fix symptoms but almost never deal with the underlying cause. We put out fires but we don’t prevent them.

The fundamental belief of CoreCause is to focus on a preventative rather than recovery stand point. Most of the worlds crises are the effects of a 'core cause' that if addressed would solve the problem entirely.

The main reason for the failure of the modern medical science is that it is dealing with results and not causes. Nothing more than the patching up of those attacked and the burying of those who are slain, without a thought being given to the real strong hold.

The best way to address a problem is at its initial stages.

Every evil in the bud is easily crushed: as it grows older, it becomes stronger.

Our calling is not only to pull people out of the river, but to go upstream to find out what or who is pushing them in.

If you wait for people to come to you, you'll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place.

I am a big believer in early intervention.

It's the people who have an incentive to find the problem who usually find the problem.

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.

If you're around the system any length of time, it becomes obvious you have to attack the problem at its root and get to 7- and 8-year old kids.

If you don't look for a problem, you won't find it.

You can't rehabilitate someone who hasn't been habilitated.

The earlier you start to solve a problem, the less draconian the solution needs to be.

Health is not valued till sickness comes

the cause must be ascertained, before the remedy is devised.

We must solve problems before they occur, rather than scrambling to deal with crises after they erupt..

No given measure and no given set of measures will work a perfect cure for any serious evil.

I think very often problems are so big, people approach problems from the bottom up: 'If only I do this little bit, then hopefully there will be some sort of snowball effect that will be bigger and bigger.' I'm much more in favor of the top-down approach to problem-solving.

The answer is always at the site of the problem.

My philosophy is to "kill the monster while it's little." The best time to handle a "negative" emotion is when you first begin to feel it. It's much more difficult to interrupt an emotional pattern once it's full-blown.

Good governance is not fire-fighting or crisis-management. Instead of opting for ad-hoc solutions the need of the hour is to tackle the root cause of the problems.

It has occasionally been remarked upon that it is as easy to overlook something large and obvious as it is to overlook something small and niggling, and that the large things one overlooks often cause problems.