The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Vintage International)

Alain De Botton

“A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. And the dominant form of snobbery that exists today is job snobbery — you encounter it within minutes at a party when you get asked that famous, iconic question of the 21st century: ‘What do you do?’ The opposite of a snob is your mother.”

Philosopher Alain de Botton on false standards and how to reclaim the metrics of success.