David Brooks Quotes (17 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

The Social Animal

David Brooks

David Brooks: 17 quotes 0 likes

Famous David Brooks Quotes

“Donald Trump betrays. It can start with Trump University, where Trump betrayed schoolteachers and others who dreamed of building a better life for themselves.”

David Brooks

"Donald Trump, the Great Betrayer" http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/opinion/donald-trump-the-great-betrayer.html?rref=opinion The New York Times (4 March 2016)
2010s

“…list of different spheres of her life: reflection, creativity, community, intimacy, and service.”

David Brooks book The Social Animal

David Brooks. The Social Animal (2011), p. 342
2010s

“Are we really here? Is this really happening? Is this America? Are we a great country talking about trying to straddle the world and create opportunity in this country? It's just mind-boggling. And we have sort of become acculturated, because this campaign has been so ugly. We have become acculturated to sleaze and unhappiness that you just want to shower from every 15 minutes. The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat. It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again. But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his — even his misogyny is a childish misogyny. And that’s why I do not think Republicans, standard Republicans, can say, yes, I’m going to vote for this guy because he’s our nominee. He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that… The odd thing about his whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy. And his relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love. And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women.”

David Brooks

David Brooks, as quoted in "Shields and Brooks on Trump-Cruz wife feud, ISIS terror in Brussels" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-and-brooks-on-trump-cruz-wife-feud-isis-terror-in-brussels/ (25 March 2016), PBS NewsHour
2010s

“The political history of the 20th century is the history of social-engineering projects executed by well-intentioned people that began well and ended badly. There were big errors like communism, but also lesser ones, like a Vietnam War designed by the best and the brightest, urban renewal efforts that decimated neighborhoods, welfare policies that had the unintended effect of weakening families and development programs that left a string of white elephant projects across the world.These experiences drove me toward the crooked timber school of public philosophy: Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Edward Banfield, Reinhold Niebuhr, Friedrich Hayek, Clinton Rossiter and George Orwell. These writers — some left, some right — had a sense of epistemological modesty. They knew how little we can know. They understood that we are strangers to ourselves and society is an immeasurably complex organism. They tended to be skeptical of technocratic, rationalist planning and suspicious of schemes to reorganize society from the top down.”

David Brooks

[David, Brooks, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/opinion/24brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion, The Big Test, New York Times, February 23, 2009, February 24, 2009]
2000s

“Donald Trump just has more courage. Whatever you might think of him, and I don’t think much of him, but he has more courage than his opponents…”

David Brooks

David Brooks, as quoted in "Shields and Brooks on the GOP push to stop Trump" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-and-brooks-on-the-gop-push-to-stop-trump/ (4 March 2016), PBS NewsHour
2010s

“About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all.”

David Brooks

[David, Brooks, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html?smid=tw-nytdavidbrooks&seid=auto&_r=0, The Moral Bucket List, New York Times, April 11, 2015]
2010s

David Brooks Quotes about people

“Almost nobody in the peace camp will stand up and say that Saddam Hussein is not a fundamental problem for the world. Almost nobody in that camp is willing even to describe what the world will look like if the peace camp's advice is taken and Saddam is permitted to remain in power in Baghdad, working away on his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs… They are playing culture war, and they are disguising their eruptions as position-taking on Iraq, a country about which they haven't even taken the trouble to inform themselves. … For most in the peace camp, there is only the fog. The debate is dominated by people who don't seem to know about Iraq and don't care. Their positions are not influenced by the facts of world affairs.”

David Brooks

[David, Brooks, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/837uvzrs.asp?pg=2, Saddam's Brain, Weekly Standard, November 11, 2002, May 24, 2011]
2000s

“It is indisputably true that Saddam has not disarmed. If people are going to vote against a resolution saying Saddam has not disarmed then they are liars.”

David Brooks

2000s
Context: I do suspect that the decision to pursue this confrontational course emerges from Bush's own nature. He is a man of his word. He expects others to be that way too. It is indisputably true that Saddam has not disarmed. If people are going to vote against a resolution saying Saddam has not disarmed then they are liars. Bush wants them to do it in public, where history can easily judge them. Needless to say, neither the French nor the Russians nor the Chinese believe that honesty has anything to do with diplomacy. They see the process through an entirely different lens.

“Britain is blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous.”

David Brooks

[David, Brooks, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/opinion/24brooks.html?_r=1, Britain Is Working, New York Times, May 23, 2011, May 24, 2011]
2010s

“[Donald Trump is] clearly racist… It fits into a pattern that we have seen since the beginning of his career, maybe through his father's career, frankly. There's been a consistency, pattern of harsh judgment against black and brown people.”

David Brooks

As quoted in "Shields and Brooks on Trump's 's***hole' comments, 'Fire and Fury' fallout" https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/shields-and-brooks-on-trumps-shole-comments-fire-and-fury-fallout#transcript (14 January 2018), PBS Newshour
2010s

“Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.”

David Brooks

David Brooks. "Money for Idiots," http://archive.li/EzXTi The New York Times, 19 February 2009.
2000s

David Brooks Quotes

“As good, naive Americans, we think that if only we can show the world the seriousness of the threat Saddam poses, then they will embrace our response. In our good, innocent way, we assume that in persuading our allies we are confronted with a problem of understanding. But suppose we are confronted with a problem of courage? Perhaps the French and the Germans are simply not brave enough to confront Saddam. Or suppose we are confronted with a problem of character? Perhaps the French and the Germans understand the risk Saddam poses to the world order. Perhaps they know that they are in danger as much as anybody. They simply would rather see American men and women--rather than French and German men and women--dying to preserve their safety. Far better, from this cynical perspective, to signal that you will not take on the terrorists--so as to earn their good will amidst the uncertain times ahead.”

David Brooks

[David, Brooks, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/215jfyfl.asp, French Kiss Off, Weekly Standard, February 6, 2003, May 24, 2011]
2000s

Women , Men , World , Way

“The message of the summoned life is that you don’t need to panic if you don’t yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come.”

David Brooks

2010s
Source: [David, Brooks, http://graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0088-brooks.htm, Commencement Address, May 14, 2011]

Life

“The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it. If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn't have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.”

David Brooks

David Brooks. "I Am Not Charlie Hebdo" http://archive.li/nlsvG The New York Times (January 2015)
2010s

Hate , Freedom , Universe

“Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium. So this might be a teachable moment. As we are mortified by the slaughter of those writers and editors in Paris, it’s a good time to come up with a less hypocritical approach to our own controversial figures, provocateurs and satirists. The first thing to say, I suppose, is that whatever you might have put on your Facebook page yesterday, it is inaccurate for most of us to claim, Je Suis Charlie Hebdo, or I Am Charlie Hebdo. Most of us don’t actually engage in the sort of deliberately offensive humor that that newspaper specializes in.”

David Brooks

David Brooks. "I Am Not Charlie Hebdo" http://archive.li/nlsvG The New York Times (January 2015)
2010s

Time

“So now we stand at an epochal moment. The debate is over. The case has gone to the jury, and the jury is history. Events will soon reveal who was right, Bush or Chirac.”

David Brooks

[David, Brooks, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/379yqbvk.asp?pg=1, 48 Hours, Weekly Standard, March 17, 2003, May 24, 2011]
2000s

History

“The nation’s economy is not just the sum of its individuals. It is an interwoven context that we all share. To stabilize that communal landscape, sometimes you have to shower money upon those who have been foolish or self-indulgent. The greedy idiots may be greedy idiots, but they are our countrymen. And at some level, we’re all in this together. If their lives don’t stabilize, then our lives don’t stabilize.”

David Brooks

David Brooks. "Money for Idiots," http://archive.li/EzXTi The New York Times, 19 February 2009.
2000s

Money , Communication