Alain de Botton Quotes

These entrepreneurs were writing their stories in a subgenre of contemporary fiction, the business plan, and populating them with characters endowed with deeply implausible personalities, an oversight which would eventually be punished not by a scathing review, … but by a lack of custom.

Alain de Botton

• Writing
• Business

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Quotes to Explore

• If the money we donate helps one child or can ease the pain of one parent, those funds are well spent.

  

  Carl Karcher
  • Money
  • Pain
  • Child

• We're all concerned about sports rights being so expensive. Obviously, we are funded by the licence fee payers, so it's not always easy to compete with those who can get greater revenue.

  

  Gary Lineker
  • Sports
  • Easy
  • Rights

• Claiming to 'fight for small business' is often used as a political tool in Washington D.C., but it is actually the policies behind that battle cry that small firms care about.

  

  Sam Graves
  • Business
  • Political
  • Small

• When I was about four, people used to walk up to my mom and say I should be in commercials.

  

  Zachary Gordon
  • People
  • Up
  • Mom

• When the Taiwan Relations Act passed in 1979, our biggest concern was preventing the use of military force against Taiwan. Little did we know that our friends on Taiwan could so effectively use the space created by our friendship to revolutionize their political system.

  

  Sam Brownback
  • Friends
  • Political
  • Space

• I still have a fear of theater. I don't know if I will manage that. I used to do it. I developed a bit of a phobia. It's not a real phobia. I can go in and watch.

  

  Laura Fraser
  • Real
  • Fear
  • Know

• I think that in Mexico, we must change some practices that were built during the 72 years of predominance in Mexico. Former presidents would just hide away, run away or disappear. And I think it's key in a democracy that presidents face people, see eye to eye to citizens and work to keep on contributing to the - to Mexico.

  

  Vicente Fox
  • People
  • Work
  • Change

• Let me just say as one who has been speaker of the House, I've had to have a very thick skin about every kind of thing that was thrown at me.

  

  Nancy Pelosi
  • House
  • Me
  • Kind

• I resent ever being stereotyped.

  

  Laura Dern
  • Being
  • Ever
  • Resent

• I think about death most of the day, every day. We can't escape death, and choosing to ignore it only makes it more scary.

  

  Caitlin Doughty
  • Think
  • Death
  • Day

• As far as everyone else's opinion, I mean, if I would have thought that everyone was right, I probably wouldn't have left Compton, so I don't get too caught up on what the next person thinks.

  

  Venus Williams
  • Up
  • Mean
  • Opinion

• I know that many authors say editors don't edit anymore, but that's not been true in my experience.

  

  Victor LaValle
  • Experience
  • True
  • Know

• The American public got to see for themselves every day, all day, how this trial progressed. There's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works.

  

  Lance Ito
  • American
  • Day
  • Value

• Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate.

  

  Olympia Brown
  • Human
  • Fate
  • Circumstances

• Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.

  

  Edsger Dijkstra
  • Success
  • Failure
  • Luxury

• I knew that I wanted to be an actor; how to go about it was the question. I went to Australia for my studies; from there I told my dad that I also want to do a course in performing arts, but my father refused. So I completed my studies and came back. But I kept poking him, saying that acting is something that I want to do.

  

  Randeep Hooda
  • Father
  • Dad
  • Question

• 'Wicked' gave us a story that 'The Wizard of Oz' did not. Two sides to every story.

  

  Abbi Glines
  • Story
  • Two
  • Sides

• Ordinarily if an actor gets chosen for the lead in a film, he or she has already built up a repertoire, and everyone knows what he or she is capable of.

  

  Zhang Ziyi
  • Up
  • She
  • Film

• We slept in the park before we had a house, and eventually we shared a home - my parents, my grandparents and five uncles, my family, all of us - on White Oaks Street by Magnolia Street near the railroad. Those were hard times, but I loved living there.

  

  Debbie Reynolds
  • Family
  • Home
  • House

• There's a number of years that went by going from a white belt to a black belt. And I think, in a similar respect, years go by with your maturation process, and it's just as important to be disciplined with that as it was in karate.

  

  D'Brickashaw Ferguson
  • Important
  • Black
  • Respect

• How important is failure - yes, failure - to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India's largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed.

  

  Naveen Jain
  • Up
  • Important
  • Business

• When I was 13, I used to go to a jazz club. The owner of the club became my first business manager. She was very gutsy and had a lot of friends, one of whom happened to be the head of jazz at Columbia at the time. That's how it all began.

  

  Johnny Mathis
  • Time
  • She
  • Business

• But no, had I been successful in my 20s I would have been just fine. But it is nice to defy the odds.

  

  Patricia Clarkson
  • Nice
  • Successful
  • Odds

• These entrepreneurs were writing their stories in a subgenre of contemporary fiction, the business plan, and populating them with characters endowed with deeply implausible personalities, an oversight which would eventually be punished not by a scathing review, … but by a lack of custom.

  

  Alain de Botton
  • Writing
  • Business