Status Anxiety

by Alain de Botton
Switzerland
Born on 20 Dec 1969
Writer / Philosopher

Quotes

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We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

Status Anxiety
The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

Status Anxiety
Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

Status Anxiety
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

Status Anxiety
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

Status Anxiety
Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Status Anxiety
We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities... and amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance... we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

Status Anxiety
To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.

Status Anxiety
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Status Anxiety

Alain de Botton

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays