David Brooks Quotes

It's only useful to ask, what wisdom have you learned from your misjudgments that will help you going forward? ~ David Brooks

The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain. ~ David Brooks

The incumbents just have a ton more money because they have rigged the system to help themselves, because they have these networks of small donors. Meanwhile, the amount of people, the incumbents being reelected has just been - that has been going up and up and up. ~ David Brooks

aridity of her own marriage at that point or her profound ~ David Brooks

There must be some supreme creative energy, he thought, that can take love and turn it into synapses and then take a population of synapses and turn it into love. The hand of God must be there ~ David Brooks

When most people think about the future, they dream up ways that they might live happier lives. But notice this phenomenon. When people remember the crucial events that formed them, they don't usually talk about happiness. It is usually the ordeals that seem most significant. Most people shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering. ~ David Brooks

Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good. ~ David Brooks

When you're running for president you have to take some risks and you've got to show people something fresh and you've got to stay interesting. ~ David Brooks

No matter where you are on politics, I think it is wonderful to see candidates funding campaigns not by talking to a very small number of very rich people, but by reaching out to a very large number of citizens. ~ David Brooks

The cognitive sciences have replaced literature as the way many people attempt to understand their own minds. ~ David Brooks

We really do have dappled souls. ~ David Brooks

This cultural, technological, and meritocratic environment hasn't made us a race of depraved barbarians. But it has made us less morally articulate. Many of us have instincts about right and wrong, about how goodness and character are built, but everything is fuzzy. Many of us have no clear idea how to build character, no rigorous way to think about such things. We are clear about external, professional things but unclear about internal, moral ones. What the Victorians were to sex, we are to morality: everything is covered in euphemism. ~ David Brooks

she enjoyed her continued glimpses into the inner workings of world affairs. She often would sit back in the middle of some long meeting and wonder how it was that these men and women had risen to the top of the global elite. They weren't marked by exceptional genius. The did not have extraordinarily deep knowledge or creative opinions. If there was one trait the best of them possessed, it was a talent for simplification. They had the ability to take a complex situation and capture the heart of the matter in simple terms. A second after they located the core fact of any problem, their observation seemed blindingly obvious, but somehow nobody had simplified the issue in quite those terms beforehand. They took reality and made it manageable for busy people. p338 ~ David Brooks

The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind. ~ David Brooks

Humanities are the instructors of enchantment. ~ David Brooks

Sometime over the past generation we became less likely to object to something because it is immoral and more likely to object to something because it is unhealthy or unsafe. So smoking is now a worse evil than six of the Ten Commandments, and the word sinful is most commonly associated with chocolate. ~ David Brooks

If the article mentions some celebrity-perhaps a recently dead politician-the author will want to mention some pointless detail from her last meeting with that person or the emotions she experienced when learning of the subject's death. ~ David Brooks

When you cover politics, you realize that knowing how to talk about character matters more and more. The way we hold ideas is more important than the ideas. ~ David Brooks

She was artificially narrowing herself, amputating every humane and tender piece that didn't fit into a rigid frame. ~ David Brooks

People want a reality that tells them they're right all of the time. ~ David Brooks

Moderation is not just finding the midpoint between two opposing poles and opportunistically planting yourself there. ~ David Brooks

A heroic moral victory for the New York Mets,. It may be the only kind of victory we're achieving this season, but he set a good example for professional athletes and the rest of us. ~ David Brooks

We have an international system. We all profit from it. Trade profits from it. Peace. We can travel around the world because of it. And part of that system is certain ideas, the certain ideas you can't invade other countries for no reason. You can't commit genocide. You can't - rogue regimes can't have nuclear weapons, and you can't gas your own people. ~ David Brooks

If I had to fault President [Barack] Obama, I would say that sometimes governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization. ~ David Brooks

She was just too curious to stay in a self-imposed mental straight-jacket for very long. ~ David Brooks

In 1950, the [Gallup organization] asked high school kids, are you a very important person? Then 12 percent said yes. Asked again in 2005, 80 percent said, yes, I'm a very important person. ~ David Brooks

The shock of public hostility served as a stimulant. It made them acutely conscious of how society functioned. ~ David Brooks

Trash talk ... Washington floats on a river of aspersion. ~ David Brooks

The great works of art and literature have a lot to say on how to tackle the concrete challenges of living, like how to escape the chains of public opinion, how to cope with grief or how to build loving friendships. Instead of organizing classes around academic concepts - 19th-century French literature - more could be organized around the concrete challenges students will face in the first decade after graduation. ~ David Brooks

The inner struggle against one's own weaknesses is the central drama of life. ~ David Brooks

The imagination offers up ideal visions of experiences which then leave us disappointed when the visions don't come true. ~ David Brooks

You don't climb the second mountain the way you climb the first mountain. You conquer your first mountain. You identify the summit, and you claw your way toward it. You are conquered by your second mountain. You surrender to some summons, and you do everything necessary to answer the call and address the problem or injustice that is in front of you. On the first mountain you tend to be ambitious, strategic, and independent. On the second mountain you tend to be relational, intimate, and relentless.
It's gotten so I can recognize first- and second-mountain people. The first-mountain people are often cheerful, interesting, and fun to be around. They often have impressive jobs and can take you to an amazing variety of great restaurants. The second-mountain people aren't averse to the pleasures of the world. They delight in a good glass of wine or a nice beach. (There's nothing worse than people who are so spiritualized they don't love the world.) But they have surpassed these pleasures in pursuit of moral joy, a feeling that they have aligned their life toward some ultimate good. If they have to choose, they choose joy. ~ David Brooks

One of the things this world is finding is that emotion is the basis of reason. We really have to trust our emotions, which are much smarter than our reason in some ways. ~ David Brooks

This is how life works. Deciding whom to love is not an alien form of decision-making, a romantic interlude in the midst of normal life. Instead, decisions about whom to love are more intense versions of the sorts of decisions we make throughout the course of our existence, from what kind of gelato to order to what career to pursue. Living is an inherently emotional business. ~ David Brooks

Humility is the awareness that there's a lot you don't know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong. ~ David Brooks

Pride blinds us to the reality of our divided nature. ~ David Brooks

There was perhaps a strain of humility that was more common then than now, that there was a moral ecology, stretching back centuries but less prominent now, encouraging people to be more skeptical of their desires, more aware of their own weaknesses, more intent on combatting the flaws in their own natures and turning weakness into strength. ~ David Brooks

Your DVD collection is organized, and so is your walk-in closet. Your car is clean and vacuumed, your frequently dialed numbers are programmed into your cordless phone, your telephone plan is suited to your needs, and your various gizmos interact without conflict. Your spouse is athletic, your kids are bright, your job is rewarding, your promotions are inevitable, everywhere you need to be comes with its own accessible parking. You look great in casual slacks. ~ David Brooks

Those born in the poorest quarter of American society have an 8% chance of earning a college degree. Those born in the wealthiest quarter of American society have a 75% chance of earning a college degree. ~ David Brooks

The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It's not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it's deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft. ~ David Brooks

America has an important role to play as the world leader in creating a global order, free trade, free waterways, free commerce, free movement of people. That happens because of U.S. military might. ~ David Brooks

Live life as a series of revelations ~ David Brooks

The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it's not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It's not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It's not nearly as big a problem as the nation's stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent. ~ David Brooks

Women, in general, are less visually aroused than men, a trait that has nearly cut the market for pornography in half. ~ David Brooks

In their best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; ~ David Brooks

The parental relationship sits outside the
the logic of meritocracy and is the closest humans come to grace. ~ David Brooks

A wise soul once declared that the ultimate power of the writer is that he has the choice of whom he wants to be co-opted by. ~ David Brooks

(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self. ~ David Brooks

I do think economic and social anxiety is the number one issue. And I'm pretty confident Hillary Clinton will be really riding that train pretty hard. ~ David Brooks

Fundamentalism is still on the march. ~ David Brooks

I think the Republican budget priorities are messed up. I salute for the way they're attacking some of the entitlement programs, but they are taking huge cuts, by pretending they're just block-granting it to the states, out of Medicaid, from the least fortunate. ~ David Brooks

Some people think humility is thinking lowly of yourself. Some people think it's not thinking about yourself. But, to me, the best definition of humility is radical self-awareness from a distance, seeing themselves from a distance and saying, what's my problem? ~ David Brooks

Not shackled to a one-track mind, he always applied two, three, or four ~ David Brooks

In my view, success is earned externally by being better than other people. But character, that sort of unfakeable goodness, is earned by being better than you used to be. And it's about self-confrontation. ~ David Brooks

We sometimes think of saint, or of people who are living like saints, as being ethereal, living in a higher spiritual realm. But of ten enough they live in an even less ethereal way than the rest of us. They are more fully of this earth, more fully engaged in the dirty, practical problems of the people around them. ~ David Brooks

Always take your job seriously, never yourself. ~ David Brooks

Students are taught how to do things, but many are not forced to reflect on why they should do them or what we are here for. ~ David Brooks

I want to try to make big films that hopefully connect with people. ~ David Brooks

The imagination simplifies our endless desires and causes us to fantasize that they can be fulfilled. ~ David Brooks

One of the frustrations about the modern world is that we don't even have a good vocabulary to describe our state. The word sentiment sounds mushy [but] sentiment is not mushy. ~ David Brooks

When your institution is under threat, you feel you have a lot of hostility, you feel things are slipping away, you have got internal problems, there's a tendency to turn inward and to focus on yourselves. ~ David Brooks

You can't really know God if you ignore his laws, especially the ones that regulate the most intimate spheres of life. You may be responsible and healthy, but you will also be shallow and inconsequential. ~ David Brooks

Alice had to be small to enter Wonderland. ~ David Brooks

But we often put our loves out of order. If someone tells you something in confidence and then you blab it as good gossip at a dinner party, you are putting your love of popularity above your love of friendship. If you talk more at a meeting than you listen, you may be putting your ardor to outshine above learning ~ David Brooks

Sin is not some demonic thing. It's just our perverse tendency to fuck things up, to favor the short term over the long term, the lower over the higher. ~ David Brooks

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. ~ David Brooks

Vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime. They almost always involve throwing yourself into a historical process. They involve compensating for the brevity of life by finding membership in a historic commitment. ~ David Brooks

Every virtue can come with its own accompanying vice. The virtue of reticence can yield the vice of aloofness. ~ David Brooks

American popular culture pivoted. Once the dominant view was that the self is to be distrusted but external institutions are to be trusted. Then the dominant view was that the self is to be trusted and external constraints are to be distrusted. ~ David Brooks

We have the choice to choose how we're going to educate our emotions. ~ David Brooks

I tend to cut David Brooks more slack than most people I know do, and I do it for one main reason. He can write. He's the best writer on that page, and I'd usually rather read him than others on that page I'm more likely to agree with. ~ Michael Tomasky

Economists sometimes do try to reduce behavior to law-like predictability. But people respond differently to different primes, to different contexts even from one moment to the next. We possess multiple selves that are aroused by different circumstances. ~ David Brooks

There are no free and democratic and wealthy countries in the world that have US rate of gun violence. We have to worry about loners and alienated people. We have to do better on mental health. ~ David Brooks

We don't have the choice to control our emotions, but we do have the power to educate our emotions. And we do that through literature and through art and music to give ourselves a repertoire of emotional experiences. ~ David Brooks

Joy is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes. ~ David Brooks

Samuel Johnson placed this on his watch as a reminder near the end of his life; The night cometh. ~ David Brooks

This shift in culture has changed us. In the first place, it has made us a bit more materialistic. College students now say they put more value on money and career success. Every year, researchers from UCLA survey a nationwide sample of college freshmen to gauge their values and what they want out of life. In 1966, 80 percent of freshmen said that they were strongly motivated to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. Today, less than half of them say that. In 1966, 42 percent said that becoming rich was an important life goal. By 1990, 74 percent agreed with that statement. Financial security, once seen as a middling value, is now tied as students' top goal. In 1966, in other words, students felt it was important to at least present themselves as philosophical and meaning-driven people. By 1990, they no longer felt the need to present themselves that way. They felt it perfectly acceptable to say they were primarily interested in money.20 We live in a more individualistic society. If ~ David Brooks

Her genius derives from the fact that she was capable of the deepest feeling but also of the most discerning and disciplined thought. ~ David Brooks

Learning was a by-product of her search for pleasure ~ David Brooks

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart. ~ David Brooks

I want to make big films. That's always been my ambition. ~ David Brooks

We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don't know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don't compare. The sensitive person understands that each person's ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else's. Next, they do the practical things--making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don't try to minimize what is going on. They don't attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don't say that the pain is all for the best. They don't search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don't bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct. ~ David Brooks

The only way to reduce ugliness in the world is to reduce it in yourself, ~ David Brooks

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year ... A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity. ~ David Brooks

Just as he was slowly bringing order to his own internal life, he would also bring order to his language. ~ David Brooks

As Paul Tillich put it, suffering introduces you to yourself and reminds you that you are not the person you thought you were. ~ David Brooks

In the educated class even social life is a series of aptitude tests; we all must perpetually perform in accordance with the shifting norms of propriety, ever advancing signals of cultivation. ~ David Brooks

For Augustine, that's the crucial change. Knowledge is not enough for tranquillity and goodness, because it doesn't contain the motivation to be good. Only love impels action. We don't become better because we acquire new information. We become better because we acquire better loves. ~ David Brooks

Friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends. ~ David Brooks

She was carried along by events, not reflecting on them, just letting them sweep over her. ~ David Brooks

We are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other. ~ David Brooks

The uncritically admiring supporters and friends of the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], in whose ranks I certainly don't include David [Brooks], but include Charles Krauthammer, the columnist, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, insist on comparing him to the incomparable leader of the British forces in country in part of - during World War II. ~ Mark Shields

I take a benign view of digital connectedness. I notice in most young people's lives, Facebook and such doesn't replace normal dating or hanging out, it just facilitates it. ~ David Brooks

But nobody lives in a universal thing called culture. They live only in specific cultures, each of which differ from one another. Plays written and produced in Germany are three times as likely to have tragic or unhappy endings than plays written and produced in the United States. Half of all people in India and Pakistan say they would marry without love, but only 2 percent of people in Japan would do so. Nearly a quarter of Americans say they are often afraid of saying the wrong things in social situations, whereas 65 percent of all Japanese say they are often afraid. In their book Drunken Comportment, Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton found that in some cultures drunken men get into fights, but in some cultures they almost never do. In some cultures drunken men grow more amorous, but in some cultures they do not. ~ David Brooks

Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views. ~ David Brooks

I'm not the most emotionally attuned guy in the world. My wife says that me writing about emotion is like Gandhi writing about gluttony. ~ David Brooks

I shall always reign through the intellect, but the life! The life! O my god! Shall that never be sweet?"12 ~ David Brooks

Augustine's feeling of fragmentation has its modern corollary in the way many contemporary young people are plague by a frantic fear of missing out. The world has provided them with a superabundance of neat things to do. Naturally, they hunger to size every opportunity and taste every experience. They want to grab all the goodies in front of them. They want to say yes to every product in the grocery store. They are terrified of missing out on anything that looks exciting. But by not renouncing any of them they spread themselves thin. What's worse, they turn themselves into goodie seekers, greedy for every experience and exclusively focused on self. If you live in this way, you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to sau a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes. ~ David Brooks

Freedom without structure is its own slavery. ~ David Brooks

I want to limit the effects of the power of donors, no question about it. ~ David Brooks