David Brooks
David Brooks
Conservative political columnist for the New York Times. He also wrote for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times and provided political commentary for National Public Radio (NPR) and the PBS NewsHour.
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth11 August 1961
CityToronto, Canada
CountryUnited States of America
talking years interesting
Bill Clinton pandered by telling you what you wanted to hear. John Kerry panders by never telling you what you don't want to hear. This is negative pandering; he talks a lot without really ruling anything out so you can draw your own conclusions.....Kerry has been talking for years, and yet such is the thicket of his verbiage that he has achieved almost complete strategic ambiguity.
past evil smoking
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.
reality fit models
If you just rely on one model, you tend to amputate reality to make it fit your model.
people loyal
You have got to be loyal to people beneath you.
memories loss suffering
It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.
art commitment people
Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically. Instead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering, they throw themselves more deeply into them. Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability. They hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments.
character self views
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.
country pain people
I certainly hear a lot of people say that Donald Trump not only incited some bad things. He also exposed some things. He exposed pain in America that a lot of us didn't have the full extent of, some of the divisions and chasms in the country.
wisdom people empathy
Empathy makes you more aware of other people's suffering, but it's not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.
atheist atheism logical
To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.
smart courageous debate
Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive.
country fall falling-apart
Our system is not only based on rules, but a series of self-restraints that we won't be as barbaric as we could be in competing for power because we know if we're all barbaric as we could be, the whole country and the whole society falls apart.
jumping race lust
Students are too busy jumping through the next hurdle in the résumé race to figure out what they really want. They are too frantic tasting everything on the smorgasbord to have life-altering encounters. They have a terror of closing off options. They have been inculcated with a lust for prestige and a fear of doing things that may put their status at risk.
world way emotion
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.