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 ideas knowing
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.
way matter born
What family you were born into matters so much more than it did before in a perverse way.
technology thinking roots
The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, 'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.'
thinking mind republican
Of those two [Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump], I do think that the - right now, at least in my mind, the Democratic theme is eclipsing the Republican one.
country brother real
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.
live-life revelations series
Live life as a series of revelations
memories loss suffering
It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.
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.
political soldier world
If there is a series of attacks like that or, God forbid, if ISIS is really sending soldiers across Europe and maybe across the world for a barrage of these things, then the political climate is revolutionized here. And maybe the [Donald] Trump speech will look like a precursor to a climate that we're all about to walk into.
gun who-i-am expression
The gun becomes this psychological totem, this thing of who I am. And it's almost as if using the gun is going to be the thing that's going to be my expression of how I make a difference in the world.
focus inward slipping
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.
eye people noses
People tend to marry people with similar-width noses, eyes similarly apart, with complementary immune systems.
thinking clinton blair
I do think British and American politics rhyme. They go in cycles. They go in Thatcher-Reagan cycles, Blair-Clinton cycles.
thinking optimism leader
I think Americans expect optimism in their leadership. The most popular and effective leaders, whether it was Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or Jack Kennedy, brought to it a sense of optimism and possibility.