David Brooks Quotes

Quotes about:

• Almost every successful person begins with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.

  David Brooks

  Inspirational, Success, Future

  112 Copy quote

• People want a reality that tells them they're right all of the time.

  David Brooks

  Reality, People, Want

  5 Copy quote

• Much of life is about failure, whether we acknowledge it or not, and your destiny is profoundly shaped by how effectively you learn from and adapt to failure.

  David Brooks

  Destiny, Life Is, Acknowledge

  David Brooks (2011). “The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens”, p.344, Short Books

  29 Copy quote

• I came to the conclusion is that we have a very shallow view of human nature in the policy world. We're really good at talking about material things, really bad at talking about emotions, really good at stuff we can count, really bad at the deeper stuff that actually drives behavior.

  David Brooks

  Views, Talking, World

  "David Brooks: From Spouses to Sofas, Emotions Tell Us What to Value". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. March 8, 2011.

  5 Copy quote

• The people who really have character make deep, unshakable connections to something outside themselves.

  David Brooks

  Character, People, Connections

  "Why character, not career success, is key to a life of consequence". "PBS NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. April 14, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

• Pain now is better than pain deferred.

  David Brooks

  Pain

  "The Horror Show at Penn State". Interview with Gail Collins, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. November 9,2011.

  4 Copy quote

• People want reality that tells them how right they are all the time.

  David Brooks

  Reality, People, Want

  5 Copy quote

• The Republican Party has become an ethnic nationalist party.

  David Brooks

  Party, Republican, Republican Party

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Brooks

  Character, Self, Views

  "Why character, not career success, is key to a life of consequence". "PBS NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. April 14, 2015.

  12 Copy quote

• We don't have the choice to control our emotions, but we do have the power to educate our emotions. And we do that through literature and through art and music to give ourselves a repertoire of emotional experiences.

  David Brooks

  Art, Emotional, Giving

  "David Brooks: From Spouses to Sofas, ‘Emotions Tell Us What to Value’". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. March 8, 2011.

  14 Copy quote

• The effectiveness of a group of people is not determined by their IQ but by how well they communicate.

  David Brooks

  Effectiveness, People, Groups

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Brooks

  Thinking, Optimism, Leader

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Live life as a series of revelations

  David Brooks

  Live Life, Revelations, Series

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Brooks

  Teacher, Discipline, World

  David Brooks (2011). “The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens”, p.83, Short Books

  19 Copy quote

• Courage is the most important virtue because it is the hardest.

  David Brooks

  Important, Virtue, Hardest

  6 Copy quote

• People who give money in large amount in politics are basically not altruistic.

  David Brooks

  People, Giving, Amount

  "Shields and Brooks on the pope’s critique of capitalism, Thanksgiving gratitude". "PBS NewsHour" with Hari Sreenivasan, www.pbs.org. November 29, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

• Donald Trump is so egregious in the way he talks about women, the way he allegedly treated women.

  David Brooks

  Way, Trump, Treated

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

• Creativity is not a solitary process. It happens within networks... when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge.

  David Brooks

  Creativity, Ideas, People

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Brooks

  Art, Commitment, People

  David Brooks (2015). “The Road to Character”, p.109, Random House

  22 Copy quote

• If you grow up in a home where actions don't lead to predictable consequences, you don't develop strategies to control your impulses.

  David Brooks

  Growing Up, Home, Action

  "Ask the Author Live: David Brooks on the Composure Class". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. January 7, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• I could tell you that when you have trouble making up your mind about something, tell yourself you'll settle it by flipping a coin. But don't go by how the coin flips; go by your emotional reaction to the coin flip. Are you happy or sad it came up heads or tails?

  David Brooks

  Graduation, Emotional, Heads Or Tails

  10 Copy quote

• Freedom without structure is its own slavery.

  David Brooks

  Slavery, Structure

  David Brooks (2011). “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement”, p.86, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• How can we expect young people to be rooted in things such as character, morality and honesty? How is one supposed to be at once an arrow soaring skyward and an oak planted firmly in the ground? The meritocratic culture hones strivers on every aspect of their lives save one - how to cultivate character.

  David Brooks

  Honesty, Character, Arrows

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

  David Brooks

  World, Way, Emotion

  "David Brooks: From Spouses to Sofas, ‘Emotions Tell Us What to Value’". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. March 8, 2011.

  27 Copy quote

• Most poverty and suffering - whether in a country, a family or a person - flows from disorganization. A stable social order is an artificial accomplishment, the result of an accumulation of habits, hectoring, moral stricture and physical coercion. Once order is dissolved, it takes hard measures to restore it

  David Brooks

  Country, Order, Accomplishment

  13 Copy quote

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