Alain de Botton Quotes

I'm too small for the universe to revolve around me. It is a huge relief!

We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself-all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.

Friends are really important, especially when you've had the successes that I've had. I've gone really far in my career, so they're the ones that keep you humble, keep your feet on the ground.

Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are.

By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.

I'm very humbled by the fact that I do have so much to say, and I just hope that my walk, my honesty, will make a difference for people and maybe motivate them.

It's time you stop thinking that because you did something, it's... amazing. All you've got to do is say, 'OK. If I'm great, what do they call Steve Jobs?'

It keeps me humble just to know exactly where I came from and all the hard work I had to put in to be here. It feels good to reminisce about the past.

People should be faced with losing everything a little bit more often because it really helps put a lot of things into perspective.

It would be completely wrong and arrogant of me to say that this is what I am, an inspiration to others. During the course of my recovery, I bumped into people with amazing stories, far more amazing than mine.

I can always take a moment when things are going well, when pressure might build, to think: 'You've had a lot worse than this.'

Personally, I don't think about the things I have won but the things I have lost.

It's important to remember to pinch yourself to remind you where you came from and how lucky you are.

Look at the sky; remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity in order to see the smallness of yourself.

Humility is a super-important factor in all of our lives, and I try to remind myself every evening in front of the mirror, 'Just calm down.'

It's tiny out there...it's inconsequential. It's ironic that we had come to study the Moon and it was really discovering the Earth.

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.

Looking at the sky last night and the moon in the first fresh dark, just a few stars, bright with their cold flares, I had a little crumpled thought, 'Oh well, the moon. It's just another place like California.' One's imagination drags its feet as we are inexorably hauled into the future.

Never lose perspective on where you are and what you've got. And how you got it.

It is good to LOOK to the past to gain appreciation for the present and perspective for the FUTURE. It is good to look upon the VIRTUES of those who have gone before; to gain STRENGTH for whatever lies ahead. It is good to REFLECT upon the work of those who labored so hard and gained so little in this world, but out of whose DREAMS and early pains, so well nurtured, has come a great gravest of which we are the beneficiaries. Their tremendous EXAMPLE can become a compelling MOTIVATION for all of us. ~Gordon B. Hinckley

He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.

Success serves men as a pedestal. It makes them seem greater when not measured by reflection.

It's important not to take yourself too seriously, ... and I think sometimes people take us a lot more seriously than we take ourselves, especially when it comes to politics. Politics, for me, is a reflection of the world I live in. But love is just as important as politics to me. They both exist in the world, you know? And if you don't reflect the entire world around you, then you're leaving something out.

If you ever want to see how small you are in the plan of God, just stand at the edge of an ocean.