David Brooks People Quotations

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.

Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone.

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

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.

What you hear in focus groups and conversations, people will give you 20 minutes of rage about how the borders are out of control. But then you start saying, practically, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about the 11 million here? What are we going to do to get some workers we need for the farms? Then people start having a normal conversation.

I've observed a few things about the few really great people I've had a chance to meet and cover...They need to be around people. You and I require sleep. They require people.

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

Labor-rich manufacturing doesn't exist anymore. Manufacturing jobs are white-collar, Silicon Valley programmers or highly-skilled technicians. They are not going to employ lots of people.

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

Most people don't form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

People generally don't suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who've endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.

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.

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...

There will just always be a distance between you and the people around you. Now, [Hillary Clinton] can clearly emotionally connect with her intimates within the zone of trust. It's just the wall outside the zone of trust is so impermeable.

You have got to be loyal to people beneath you.

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.

I certainly hear a lot of people say that Donald Trump not only incited some bad things. He also exposed some things. He exposed pain in America that a lot of us didn't have the full extent of, some of the divisions and chasms in the country.

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.

The incumbents just have a ton more money because they have rigged the system to help themselves, because they have these networks of small donors. Meanwhile, the amount of people, the incumbents being reelected has just been - that has been going up and up and up.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a fascinating figure.We say Nixonian about a lot of people. He really is Nixonian. He's brilliant. He's very isolated and insular.

When you're running for president you have to take some risks and you've got to show people something fresh and you've got to stay interesting.

Israel is a country of six million people. They need the U.S. It used to be bipartisan on Israeli politics. You never messed with that relationship. The fact that [ Benjamin] Netanyahu is willing to do that, I thought would horrify voters more than it turned out it did.

We have an international system. We all profit from it. Trade profits from it. Peace. We can travel around the world because of it. And part of that system is certain ideas, the certain ideas you can't invade other countries for no reason. You can't commit genocide. You can't - rogue regimes can't have nuclear weapons, and you can't gas your own people.

I take a benign view of digital connectedness. I notice in most young people's lives, Facebook and such doesn't replace normal dating or hanging out, it just facilitates it.

I don't think history will ever be a science because history will never be reduced to law-like behavior. People are to unpredictable.

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.

People tend to marry people with similar-width noses, eyes similarly apart, with complementary immune systems.

I want to try to make big films that hopefully connect with people.

It's almost inherent, but I'm a massive [Stanley] Kubrick fan. I'm a big admirer of what guys like Christopher Nolan have been able to do. For me, to be able to try to make big films that reach a lot of people, and that hopefully have something to say, is a lofty goal, but that's my goal.

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

People who give money in large amount in politics are basically not altruistic.They have some issue. They have some interest.It may be preserving carried interest. But it's not altruistic.

I think there are two basic approaches you can use for campaign finance. One is complete openness, everybody knows absolutely everything, but no limits. But you let people decide.The other is just have a national public system.

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

The technology's going to change, but what people want to read is going to be basically the same.

The three people who are most often talked about with Hillary Clinton, whether it's Tim Kaine or Vilsack or Cory Booker, they are three extremely nice people.

Barack Obama won such a big electoral mandate because a lot of people thought he was - transcended partisan and ideological barriers and was going to put aside the old debates. So, he was able to get a lot of moderates and a lot of independents.

When you talk about the problem of illegal immigration, people are angry and polarized. When you talk about the answers, the debate gets a little different.

It's important for presidents to emotionally connect, with the country in times of crisis, but also with people in Washington. If you can't emotionally connect - and [Barack] Obama is not the greatest, but he can at least do it - then people won't be with you when the times are hard.

We are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other.

The more people doubt their own beliefs the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them.

I've come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks.

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

People generally overestimate how distinct their lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them like a series of miracles.

Bragging about what a good deal you got is one of the many great art forms that my people, the Jews, have introduced to American culture.

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.

Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.

We ought to give people who don't want to go back to New Orleans the means to disperse into middle-class areas nationwide.

The White House has to be breathing a sigh of relief, and the American people have to know that the wave of hysteria, the wave of paranoia, the wave of charges and allegations about Karl Rove and everybody else so far is unsupported by facts,