The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any... - Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

"It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet--that is primarily to blame for angering and embittering us. The incompatibility between the grandeur of our aspirations and the mean reality of our condition generates the violent disappointments which rack our days and etch themselves in lines of acrimony across our faces."