"Aside from the equation it draws between making money and being good, the modern ideal of a successful life posits a further linkage between making money and being happy. This latter association rests on … assumptions. First, it is presumed that identifying what will make us happy is not an inordinately difficult task. Just as our bodies typically know what they need in order to be healthy… so, too, the theory goes, can our minds to be relied upon to understand what we should aim for so as to flourish as whole human beings. … Second, it is taken for granted that the enormous range of … consumer goods available to modern civilization is not merely a gaudy, enervating show responsible for stoking desires bearing little relevance to our welfare, but is, rather, a helpful array of potentialities and products, capable of satisfying some of our most important needs."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
University of Cambridge alumniTelevision personalitiesNon-fiction authorsFellows of the Royal Society of LiteraturePeople from ZĂĽrich
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 5 (pt.6 27:39).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Alain de Botton
63 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Alain de Botton →
Related Quotes
"It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds…"
"It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public."
"Deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simpl…"
"Life is near-death experience."
"I think where people tend to end up results from a combination of encouragement, accident, and lucky break, etc. etc.…"
"This ideal University of Life … would never take the importance of culture for granted. It would know that culture is…"
"Socrates compared living without thinking systematically to practicing an activity like pottery or shoemaking without…"
"There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are."
"It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is."
"Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterica…"