Alain de Botton Quotes

Thinking is not always...comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting. Royal Assassin

We're only really thinking when we can't think out fully what we are really thinking about!

I think that in a general sense, the idea of getting comfortable with the truth in life is uncomfortable.

C'mon kid. Think a minute, even if it hurts.

I think that I feel an indignation when I don't understand something.

The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.

We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to hate when we suffer. It is so depressing to think that we suffer because we are fools; yet, taking mankind in the mass, that is the truth.

I don't have a favorite I like and then I'll go and watch "Days of Heaven" and I go how beautiful is that. So I think, at least my idea, was lets bring something again that's primitive and guttural but then let's also do something beautiful where you're outside and this isn't a typical western setting. It's lush. It's green. It's beautiful.

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.

I love to disturb people, because only by disturbing them you can make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them. People have been consoling them. I am not going to console anybody... Because the more you console them, the more retarded they remain. Shog them, hit them hard, give them challenge. That challenge will bring their full capacities to the climax.

Paradoxes are useful to attract attention to ideas.

Sometimes it feels like I'm thinking against the wind.

Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think.

Nothing makes a man, or a body of men, as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it, they laugh it off.

It's hard for me to know. I'll think, 'I really brought off my ideas, it's great,' and no one sparks to it

If you just think Donnie Darkos a weird movie, you don't want to think. You don't want to feel your feelings. So yeah, I do want to shake 'em up.

Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age.

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.

Anxious. Intriguing word. It literally means, "to be divided" or "distracted." It conveys the idea of being so mentally ill at ease that you cannot do what you need to do because you are so distracted in your thinking.

Thinking about her again caused his body to harden, to ready... "Uh, I'm happy to sit close to you and everything, but I had no idea you would like it so much," Paris muttered. For the first time in hundreds of years, Maddox felt a blush creep into his cheek, "It's not for you." "Thank the gods," was his friends reply. -Maddox and Paris

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

I never thought I had the ability to not watch. People think I watch MSNBC's "Morning Joe." I don't watch "Morning Joe." I never thought I had the ability to, and who used to treat me great by the way, when I played the game. I never thought I had the ability to not watch what is unpleasant, if it's about me. Or pleasant. But when I see it's such false reporting and such bad reporting and false reporting that I've developed an ability that I never thought I had. I don't watch things that are unpleasant. I just don't watch them.

Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea.