# Quote — Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

> Socrates compared living without thinking systematically to practicing an activity like pottery or shoemaking without following or even knowing of technical procedures. One would never imagine that a good pot or shoe would result from intuition alone; why then assume that the more complex task of directing one’s life could be undertaken without any sustained reflection on premises or goals? Perhaps because we don’t believe that directing our lives is in fact complicated. Certain difficult activities look very difficult from the outside, while other equally difficult activities look very easy. Arriving at sound views on how to live falls into the second category, making a pot or a shoe into the first.

- Author: [Alain de Botton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton.md)
- Book: [The Consolations of Philosophy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy.md)
- Page: 21
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Consolations_of_Philosophy_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/socrates-compared-living

## More from this book

> By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

p. 146 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/by-travelling-across.md)

> To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant.
>
> We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

p. 228 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/to-cut-out.md)

> In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

p. 199 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/in-their-different.md)