Alain de Botton Quotes
The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.
Quotes to Explore
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I love films that show people in a way that's so real it's almost unsettling, and that's what really inspires me because I write about people. I write about people that I know, so I want to portray them and portray myself in a way that is unapologetic.
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The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.
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Being listened to and being heard is an experience that doesn't happen terribly often. To listen compassionately or nonjudgmentally to another person - not to get too heavy about it - but I once heard somebody say that was a form of real prayer.
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Sometimes the kids come up with better endings than the real story.
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'Pyrapshere' began as a sketch for a variety show I produced called 'A Pretty Good Show.' My partner, Andersen Gabrych, and I expanded it into a full-fledged faux-religion, including a list of 21 tenets, sacred symbols, testimonials, and even a clothing line. Many people believed it was a real thing and wanted to join.
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Creativity is how we cope with creation. While creation sometimes seems a bit un-graspable, or even pointless, creativity is always meaningful.
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When I write for kids, I have to make sure they know what can't happen. They have to know it's a fantasy. But when I write for adults, they have to think it's real. Every detail has to be real or they won't buy it.
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When people talk about the impact of mobile dating, everyone focuses on real-time meeting - this idea that my pocket will vibrate every time a hot girl walks by. That's important. But it's not transformative.
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In the old days, you had an audience of about 400, half of whom were committee members from somewhere or other sitting in their suits. It's become a real sports event with sports fans now.
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Sometimes you're going to have someone on your team who's just not comfortable with being open. You have to ask yourself, 'Is this person going to allow us to be a real team?' Maybe they're not right for your team. You have to be willing to lose someone sometimes.
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I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.
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One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it.
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I like to make the best of what I have. I'm not a supermodel, clearly. I'm not a makeup artist. I'm a real woman.
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Relationships are hard. If as an actor you marry an engineer or a doctor, it's really hard for them because they don't understand what your life is like. We live two lives. We have a 'reel' life and a real life.
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Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
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You dread that there will be real problems during filming.
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Then if your movie clicks with real audiences, you'll be sucked into some sort of Hollywood orbit. It's a devil of a place where the only religion that really counts is box office.
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It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.
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Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine, but has also hurt it in many ways, making it more impersonal, expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us, permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices, has undermined our spirit of self-reliance.
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Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, that we readily believe; but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.
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There's a chunk of myself in every part I play.
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There is not a man beneath the canopy of Heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
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The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.
