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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.


Alain de Botton

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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's not how you pick your nose, it's where you put that booger that counts.
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DEYTH BANGER In sales, it's not what you say; it's how they perceive what you say.
JEFFREY GITOMER It's not what you wear it's how you wear it, is what I say.
RACHEL STEVENS Your success is in your point of view. It's your life that you're talking about; it's yo...
BILLY CRYSTAL I think that ultimately your age is determined by your attitude. It's not the number; it's n...
CHRISTIE BRINKLEY The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what ot...
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GEORGE SAUNDERS He never seemed to get tired. Always first up and ready to move on. Never afraid of what lay ahead.
ERIN HUNTER It's not what you achieve, it's what you overcome. That's what defines your career.
CARLTON FISK I say always follow your passion, no matter what, because even if it's not the same financial su...
ELLEN DEGENERES There's a side of fashion that's very analytical and data-oriented and methodical, but there...
IMRAN AMED Speed Reader: Nothing more than… "Getting knowledge in a fast way".

(Note: What's that?...
DEYTH BANGER It's hard to say goodbye to the streets. It's all how you do it. You can pass by and say, &#...
SNOOP DOGG 28. Feelings are neither right nor wrong. It's what you do with them that causes the problems.
JAMES C. DOBSON Making books is a very specific kind of activity. It's not really a collection of your best pict...
ELLIOTT ERWITT We concentrate so much on anniversaries and birthdays that you forget it's the Tuesday that'...
BJ THE CHICAGO KID Science is you! It's your head, it's your dog, it's your iPhone - it's the world. Ho...
MARY ROACH You can't just blame things on evil. Everyone's a human, so when people say that somebody...
ERIC JOHNSON I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say th...
VERA FARMIGA It's not necessarily the amount of time you spend at practice that counts; it's what you put...
ERIC LINDROS People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about...
CHINUA ACHEBE You don't find interesting stuff because you don't search enough, ... every book has it's own lesson...
DEYTH BANGER I just want to say to women, 'Be yourself - it's the inner beauty that counts. You are your ...
CHERIE LUNGHI At first I was a bit indignant about it, and then I realised, 'No, that's what people want, ...
JULIA ORMOND It takes an entire book to tell you what it was like. To see Robert De Niro play your father - it...
NICK FLYNN It's a weird thing to say you want people to be sick of your song, but I guess that's what h...
VANCE JOY It's such a weird self-confidence that an artist has - to conceive of this thing that serves no ...
DAN COLEN And what I am trying to say to them that through our ads and through our discussions is if you don&#...
LEE SCOTT Success is what you do with your ability. It's how you use your talent.
GEORGE ALLEN, SR. When I say 'yes' to a movie it's usually because, to a greater or lesser extent, it'...
JOHN TRAVOLTA You renew yourself every day. Sometimes you're successful, sometimes your not, but it's the ...
SATYA NADELLA Writers displace their anxiety on to the tools of the trade. It's better to say that you haven&#...
HILARY MANTEL There's no greatest moment in the arts. It's a life, it's a continuity thing. You can...
LEROY NEIMAN There's a fundamental difference between how often men remember to say 'I love you' and ...
BRETT YOUNG Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's yo...
ARISTOPHANES The phone that you carry around with you. It's not just that it's a locator for anybody who ...
EDWARD ZWICK I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think...
MAYA LIN As a producer you have creative control, and that's what is so exciting about it. At the end of ...
TERESA PALMER It's not how big your pencil is; it's how you write your name.
DAVE MUSTAINE ...So to be fast to don't be long and to try to be short... If you want to play the best game, creat...
DEYTH BANGER It's not whether you fall or make a mistake, it's what you do when you fall. And I say you s...
CARY-HIROYUKI TAGAWA Or maybe they just accept that it's wrong in God's eyes, although not in their own, and they'll worr...
CRAIG GROESCHEL When you raise your voice in song to express what's going on deep inside of you, I think people ...
JANE LYNCH They say that your second trimester is when you get most of your energy and it's the 'easies...
MALIN AKERMAN If it's a cliche to say that intellectual curiosity keeps your mind sharp, your senses alert, an...
ADENA FRIEDMAN With music, you're really showing someone a piece of your soul. You're saying, 'This is ...
ALEXANDRA SHIPP I feel like it's always about embracing what it is that you think is wrong with you. It's of...
OLIVIA THIRLBY Grief is like a moving river, so that's what I mean by it's always changing. It's a stra...
MICHELLE WILLIAMS It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
JOHN WOODEN Living my life socially means there is a swagger to how I dress, walk; it's not about being '...
BJ THE CHICAGO KID You have the right to kill me, but you don't have the right to judge me. That's life. There&...
CHARLIE SHEEN There's more to anybody. Just because you haven't noticed it, that's your problem, that&...
AL LEWIS I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agr...
JOSS WHEDON For film and television, it's interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifestin...
CARRIE BROWNSTEIN There's an old saying in Hollywood: It's not the length of your film, it's how you use i...
BEN STILLER They say I'm insane because I need to have so much creative control. They say I'm unmanageab...
IGGY AZALEA Robert De Niro taught me how to listen, and how to be part of the conversation. It's not just ab...
CATHY MORIARTY Fashion is a vampiric thing; it's the Hoover on your brain. That's why I wear the hats, to k...
ISABELLA BLOW It’s not the dress you wear; it is your attitude that can express that you really care.
DEBASISH MRIDHA It's not easy to sit down and open yourself up and say, 'This is how much I love you,' y...
JASON ISBELL When you get into your 40s, it's all about lighting. It's hard. You have to face whether the...
ELISABETH SHUE A whole bunch of 'ayes' and a whole bunch of 'yeahs.' That's it. That's all ...
LIL UZI VERT Can dancing change your life? Yes. It's changed mine. What I've learned is, it's not abo...
LISA RINNA Whether you like it or not, you're forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. Bu...
CLINT EASTWOOD The best fashion advice I'd say would be just to do what makes you comfortable and what makes yo...
ARIANA GRANDE I believe in life that you know that everything prepares you for the next thing - whether it's a...
LEE DANIELS Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you...
CATE BLANCHETT The secret of success in every field is redefining what success means to you. It can't be your p...
RUPAUL People say you make your own luck; I don't think that's the case, but maybe you contribute t...
JERRY REINSDORF It's not important to how the band functions or to what we do. That's just many people's...
BRODY ARMSTRONG 'Burn Notice' is a show that definitely has some levity to it and it's a fun show, but i...
TRICIA HELFER Smoking sucks! The one thing I would say to my kid is, 'It's not just that it's bad for ...
KATHERINE HEIGL When everything works best, it's not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI Failure is enriching. It's also important to accept that you'll make mistakes - it's how...
ALAIN DUCASSE It's human nature to not say everything that's on your mind at the time you think it. Becaus...
TAYLOR SWIFT It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.
WILL ROGERS Negotiation is not a policy. It's a technique. It's something you use when it's to your ...
JOHN BOLTON Don't buy this 'believe in yourself' rubbish. Why do they keep telling youngsters that? ...
STEVE WINWOOD You are an adult and you don't understand me and what are the differences between the adult and the ...
DEYTH BANGER You know what, I'm happy to say that everything outside of 'Dexter' feels like a vacatio...
JENNIFER CARPENTER Making a movie is a network of decisions that keep multiplying as you go. You leave a trail of decis...
SYDNEY POLLACK I think a lot of times it's not money that's the primary motivation factor; it's the pas...
MARTIN YAN Managers used to say, 'I have a gut feeling.' Do you know what a gut feeling is for a profes...
SAFRA A. CATZ I have the motto that says, 'Whatever you see in your closet that you like, pick it and wear it....
WILLOW SMITH I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It al...
JOHN LENNON Whatever obstacle comes your way, you gotta be prepared to jump over it! And I think that's what...
AKON It's very difficult to escape your background. You know, I don't think it's necessary to...
SAM SHEPARD There's been a lot of simple vilification of right-wing people. It's really easy to say, ...
LOUIS C. K. Nobody can quantify for you what's the impact of eating fiber every day, for instance. We can sa...
ANNE WOJCICKI It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say...
AARON SISKIND It's never what you say, but how you make it sound sincere.
MARYA MANNES If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will a...
MAYA ANGELOU Islam's not just about covering your hair. It's about how you treat other people.
BASSEM YOUSSEF They say I can open movies, and that's nice in that it puts into people's minds that women c...
JULIA ROBERTS Meeting all walks of life, it broadened your horizons, let's say that.
WILLIAM O'NEILL It's not what other people believe you can do, it's what you believe.
GAIL DEVERS

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ALAIN DE BOTTON The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually get...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Therapy and counseling can do wonderful things for people. But they have emerged so far as what are ...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON We are never through with the requirement for acceptance. This isn't a curse limited to the inadequa...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there woul...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with mach...
ALAIN DE BOTTON For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
we know nothing. Romances...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms mig...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have repla...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What we typically call love is only the start of love. Our understanding of love has been hijacked a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single bo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never sav...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs...
ALAIN DE BOTTON as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status an...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the statu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire li...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in ot...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON ...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with on...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don&...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent techno...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to informat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surren...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t al...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to h...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Because I have this thing about birthdays--they always remind me of death and forced jollity.
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beaut...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our plane...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Travel is a lot like love.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, rai...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
ALAIN DE BOTTON For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualis...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
ALAIN DE BOTTON in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTON But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN BOTTON