David Brooks Quotes - Page 5

[Betsy DeVos] is quite a smart person, capable, pretty sophisticated in subtle thought. And so to me, that puts her in the realm of policy. But we're in a climate where, as today, she tries to visit a school, and she can't even do that because protesters are blocking that.

The moral foundation of the society, the way we interact with each other is more fundamental than the Supreme Court.

We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

When a president speaks that usually means a lot.

I sort of feel we have to owe some respect to the process and owe some respect to the electorate and the people who voted Donald Trump, on the assumption that they have something to teach us.

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.

Donald Trump has a pre-modern monarchic family structure. His business is a monarchy with family members all around. His administration is a monarchy with family members all around.

You have a country that is 20 percent liberal, 40 percent conservative. You have a country where maybe 22 percent have faith in government. If you're a liberal, it's just going to be tough. And you should just expect that. And it's tough for people on the right, too, because they don't get what they want either if you're, say, a libertarian. So, you have got the country sort of against you. And, nevertheless, you have a president.

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

Donald Trump is sort of an Orwellian figure, an authoritarian figure who is twisting words in an Orwellian manner, "1984," to exercise power and control people's minds, or is he a 5-year-old who has an ego that needs to be fed, and the universe has to warp around his ego needs so he can feel good about himself, and everybody has to produce photos to make the monarch feel like he's made of gold.

Through American history, we have had populist movements that often, often, often have this ugly racial element. But, often, there are warning signs of some deeper social and economic problem.

I think Romney's foreign policy is sensible.

Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in.

The prevailing view is that geniuses are largely built, not born.

We pretend to be a middle class, democratic nation, but in reality we love our blue bloods. ... We love the prep school manners, the aristocratic calm, the Skull and Bones mystery, the dappled lawns stretching before New England summer homes. How else can be explained the Bush vs. Kerry match-up that confronts us this year?

Donald Trump's got to do some big changes, because what he was voted on. But when you think about how to do it, it would take massive expertise, which his people, believe me, do not have.

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.

My SUV, assuming Hummer comes out with a model for those who find the current ones too cramped, will look something like the Louisiana Superdome on wheels. It'll guzzle so much gas as I walk out to my driveway there will be squads of Saudi princes gaping and applauding. It'll come, when I buy it, with little Hondas and Mazdas already embedded in the front grillwork.

If you do have to look at polls, you should do it no more than once every few days, to get a general sense of the state of the race. I've seen the work on information overload, which makes people depressed, stressed and freezes their brains. I know that checking the polls constantly is a recipe for self-deception and anxiety.

I think Donald Trump is going to find it very hard to do the kind of massive change he wants.

People used to complain that selling a president was like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy soap, at least you get the soap. In this campaign, you just get two guys telling you they really value cleanliness.

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.

It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.

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.

On the larger issue of the travel ban, our friend Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post I think put it pretty well. I'm not sure it's illegal, but it's extremely stupid.