Alain de Botton Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I've never hankered for any role.
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We never wore burkas because Somalis had our own culture.
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I don't think a woman riding a motorcycle thinks of herself as doing something that has sex appeal. I think she's trying to replicate for herself an experience that she sees men having.
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It's important to me to try and expose young people to the things they believe are off-limits to them. I tell them, 'There are no walls, only the ones we put up.' My advice to young people looking at my life is not to follow my footprint but to go out there and make their own.
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I'm an all-things-in-moderation kind of person. I do eat a warm donut occasionally. I especially enjoy a cider donut when I'm apple picking. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
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I am a scientist. Mine is a professional world that achieves great things for humanity.
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Technology is changing the way we interact as humans.
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You must pass your days in song. Let your whole life be a song.
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Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.
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Back in 1975, we were making all the decisions about what people were going to watch.
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If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to 'Firefly', make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet.
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I had a good imagination and I still have one; a child-like imagination that hasn't gone away.
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One of my favorite experiences in my career, certainly one of the most interesting characters I've ever played, was Simon Lee on 'The Event.' That was a show I was quite proud of and a character I really enjoyed playing. It was one of the most three-dimensional characters that was ever written for me and that I'd ever gotten to play.
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Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.
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We are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing the world. When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority.
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I've got to be out doing a million things. That's how I find stories. That's how I get the relationships and get the projects that I get with the writers, the directors.
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Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.
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I'm interested in Scotland now and then, how it's changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?
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My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.
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I like old people falling over, that's what makes me laugh.
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There are many plant medicines that are available to us that have a lot of stigma around them that I hope, in the future, our medical community can look at, because I would absolutely go to those alternatives first before I went back to Western medicine.
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Always rushing to get older, it’s the last thing that I want. I was hell bent on leaving, now I’m dying to go home. It feels like time is flying when it used to drag on.
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The winter will be long and bleak. Nature has a dismal aspect.
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We should not be frightened by appearances.
