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
David Brooks quotes about
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.
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.
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.
self law people
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.
memories loss suffering
It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.
egypt recipes ingredients
It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.
rich poor exploits
The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them.
soul dollars equal
We are all fundamentally equal souls, and if you make a zillion dollars, you're not any better than anybody else spiritually. You're still an equal soul.
people needs individual-power
Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.
honesty thinking world
I think we are all disgusted by the way George W. Bush's administration has allowed honesty and candor to seep into the genteel world of international affairs.
thinking trying littles
We live in a culture that encourages us to be big about ourselves, and I think the starting point of trying to build inner goodness is to be a little bit smaller about yourself.
simple rise-of-china narrative
It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs.
views genius prevailing
The prevailing view is that geniuses are largely built, not born.
teacher discipline world
The point of being a teacher is to do more than impart facts, it's to shape the way students perceive the world, to help a student absorb the rules of a discipline. The teachers who do that get remembered.