幽默不仅是攻击地位显赫之人的有效工具,而且能够帮助我们理解并缓解我们自己的身份焦虑。
阿兰·德波顿
英国作家

阿兰·德波顿(Alain de Botton),英国作家,1969年出生于瑞士苏黎世,毕业于英国剑桥大学。著有小说《爱情笔记》、《爱上浪漫》、《亲吻与诉说》及散文作品《拥抱逝水年华》、《哲学的慰藉》、《旅行的艺术》、《身份的焦虑》等。

And we also suck in messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to marketing, etc. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. When we're told that banking is a very respectable profession, a lot of us want to go into banking. When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.

我们也会从电视、广告,各样的市场宣传中得到我们对成功的想象。这些东西影响了我们,对我们自己的看法、我们想要什么。当我们听说银行业是个受人尊敬的行业,许多人便加入银行业,当银行业不再受人尊敬,我们便对银行业失去兴趣,我们很能接受建议。

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阿兰·德波顿

So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas, and make sure that we own them; that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out, at the end of the journey, that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

我想说的是,我们不该放弃,我们对成功的想象,但必须确定那些都是我们自己想要的,我们应该专注于我们自己的目标,确定这目标是我们真正想要的,确定这个梦想蓝图出自自己笔下。因为得不到自己想要的已经够糟糕了,更糟糕的是,在人生旅程的终点,发觉你所追求的从来就不是你真正想要的。

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阿兰·德波顿

So, I'm going to end it there. But what I really want to stress is: by all means, success, yes. But let's accept the strangeness of some of our ideas. Let's probe away at our notions of success. Let's make sure our ideas of success are truly our own.

我必须在这里做个总结,但我真正想说的是,成功是必要的,但请接受自己怪异的想法,朝着自己对成功的定义出发,确定我们对成功的定义都是出于自己的真心。

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阿兰·德波顿

I think it's merely the randomness of the winning and losing process that I want to stress, because the emphasis nowadays is so much on the justice of everything, and politicians always talk about justice. Now I'm a firm believer in justice, I just think that it's impossible. So we should do everything we can to pursue it, but we should always remember that whoever is facing us, whatever has happened in their lives, there will be a strong element of the haphazard. That's what I'm trying to leave room for; otherwise, it can get quite claustrophobic.

在输赢的过程中有太多偶然,今日我们太讲求所有事情的正义和公平,政治人物总是在谈论正义,我非常支持正义,我只是觉得那不可能,我们应该尽力,尽力去追求正义,但我们也应该记得,我们所面对的,无论在他们人生中发生过什么,偶然总是一个强烈的因素,我希望大家留一点空间这么想,不然真令人有一种幽闭恐怖症的感觉。

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阿兰·德波顿

The nightmare thought is that frightening people is the best way to get work out of them, and that somehow the crueler the environment, the more people will rise to the challenge. You want to think, who would you like as your ideal dad? And your ideal dad is somebody who is tough but gentle. And it's a very hard line to make. We need fathers, as it were, the exemplary father figures in society, avoiding the two extremes, which is the authoritarian disciplinarian on the one hand, and on the other, the lax, no-rules option.

梦魇是相信恐吓人们是刺激他们发奋的最好办法,或是环境越残酷,就会有越多人接受挑战。你必须想,你的理想父亲是怎样的?你的理想父亲往往是严厉又温和的,虽然这界限很难画定,我们社会需要的模范性人物是像一个理想父亲,不要走极端,不要完全集权、纯粹纪律,也不要模糊马虎,乱无规章。

阿兰·德波顿名人名言哲理格言警句语录
阿兰·德波顿