A Quote by Alain de Botton

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

Alain de Botton

Quote Topics

Conducive Conversations Few Internal Journeys More Moving Places Planes Ships Than Thought Trains

Quote Author

Alain de Botton
English - Writer
Born: December 20, 1969

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

Alain de Botton

I read most often when I am on the road, travelling on my journeys. In cars, on planes, trains... I'm very lucky that I don't get car sick when I am reading and I can spend really long journeys immersed in a book!

Steve Backshall

My yoga mat comes everywhere. Keeps me stretched out after sitting still on all those planes, trains and road journeys.

Natalie Dormer

I had a very humane, what the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova would probably have called 'vegetarian,' experience of migration. It involved planes and trains - the actual compartments of passenger trains - and not grueling walking and riding on the roofs of trains.

Masha Gessen

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

Barack Obama

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.

Jonathan Safran Foer

I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends’ houses. I like places where there’s stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Factory farming is one of the biggest contributors to the most serious environmental problems. The meat industry causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, planes and ships in the world.

Joan Jett

I find there are a few places where I like to meditate more than in other places. There's a little Catholic church that I go to, and there's another temple I go to - there are certain places where I just feel more comfortable.

Michael Keaton

What thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.

Marianne Wiggins

The thing about drugs and sex is that you lose all your inhibitions. I've had sex in trains, planes, wine bars... and quite a few car parks!

Robbie Williams

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.

Edith Hamilton

A few places are especially conducive to inspiration - automobiles, church - public places. I plotted Couples almost entirely in church - little shivers and urgencies I would note down on the program, and carry down to the office Monday.

John Updike

For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I'm really happy when I'm waiting for a plane and the message comes that it's three hours late. Great, I'll get to write!