[wallflower]

"A lot of times our ideas of what it is like to live successfully are not our own. If you're a man, your father. If you're a woman, your mother.. We are highly open to suggestion. We should be truly the authors of our own ambitions. It is bad enough to not get what you want but even worse to find out at the end of the journey that what you got is not what you wanted."

"That problem is envy. If there is one dominant emotion in modern society - that is envy. And it's linked to the spirit of equality. We don't envy the Queen of England...because we can't relate to her... And when you can't relate to somebody, you don't envy them. The closer two people are in age, in background, in the process of identification, the more there is a danger of envy... Which is why you should never go to the same school but.. The problem of modern society is it turns the whole world into a school - everybody is wearing jeans and the same and yet they're not."

"One of the reasons we fear failure... is the judgment and ridicule of others. The number one organ of ridicule is the newspaper... they have failed and they are described as losers."

"We tend to worship ourselves. Our heroes are human heroes. Most other societies have had at that center something that is transcendent. A God, a spirit, a natural force, the universe"

-Alian de Botton