110+ David Brooks Quotes On Character, Influential And Principled

David Brooks is an American political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. He is also a regular analyst on PBS NewsHour and National Public Radio. He is known for his centrist political views and for his books, including Bobos in Paradise and The Social Animal. Following is our collection on famous quotes by David Brooks on character, influential, principled.

Top 10 David Brooks Quotes

1. 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.
2. Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.
3. The daily activity that contributes most to happiness is having dinner with friends. The daily activity that detracts most from happiness is commuting. Eat more. Commute less.
4. It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.
5. Populists hate journalists, they hate teachers, they hate lawyers, but they tend to like rich people. There's something deeply consistent.
6. To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.
7. America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams.
8. Creativity is not a solitary process. It happens within networks... when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge.
9. ... trash talk ... Washington floats on a river of aspersion.
10. 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.

David Brooks Short Quotes

• You have to have a plan, or else you're just creating a recipe for chaos.
• Freedom without structure is its own slavery.
• Plunder is morally wrong. It ruins your credibility.
• Woe to you who insults the intelligence community, if you're president.
• Two terrible behaviors don't make a good behavior.
• On the [Andrew] Puzder point, I do agree there has been a double standard.
• The Republican Party has become an ethnic nationalist party.
• I think Barack Obama's foreign policy will be regarded more failure than success.
• I'm of course nostalgic for Barack Obama all of a sudden.
• When a president speaks that usually means a lot.

David Brooks Quotes About Character

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. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

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

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

Hillary Clinton continues to say Donald Trump's unacceptable, he doesn't have the character to be president. He is saying - continues saying she needs to be in prison. — David Brooks

David Brooks Quotes About Important

I can't imagine that being in the Trump Cabinet will be a very important job. I do think this will be a White House-run administration with a teeny-tiny group of people surrounding him, including his family maybe. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

Courage is the most important virtue because it is the hardest. — David Brooks

America has an important role to play as the world leader in creating a global order, free trade, free waterways, free commerce, free movement of people. That happens because of U.S. military might. — David Brooks

Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. — David Brooks

The school asks a person who has achieved a certain level of career success to give you a speech telling you that career success is not important. — David Brooks

David Brooks Quotes About People

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. — David Brooks

Jim Stavridis is the former NATO commander who is sometimes on people's lists, also very plausible, self-possessed, someone with sobriety. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

Most poor people in America are white. The family breakdown issue is an issue that crosses all sorts of racial lines. High school dropout issues. But because of the flow of events which involve the racial component, we've sometimes confused racial issues with other issues which are trans-racial. — David Brooks

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

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

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. — David Brooks

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

You have got to have two things in education reform. You have got to have some flexibility, so people can figure out what to do. But you also have to have accountable, basically what the Common Core standards were, some sort of set of national standards, so we can measure. — David Brooks

David Brooks Quotes About Politics

The politics is broken up and down. And Trump may emerge from a reality TV world that is much more powerful than we think. And there is the prospect that this is where we are, which is an horrific thought. — David Brooks

I am not a Jew for Jesus but I am definitely a Jew for Christmas. Christmas is one of the best things you Christians have given us, along with mac and cheese, Bono, croquet and politeness. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

There are plenty of team players in government who do whatever the leader says. There are too few difficult members, who have complicated minds, unusual perspectives, the toughness to withstand the party-line barrages and a practical interest in producing results. — David Brooks

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

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

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

I do think British and American politics rhyme. They go in cycles. They go in Thatcher-Reagan cycles, Blair-Clinton cycles. — David Brooks

I would like to see an animating passion. Tim Kaine actually had a good line. What animated you before you got into politics? And she actually does have a story there to tell about children. And so drawing that animating passion will do good. — David Brooks

Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views. — David Brooks

David Brooks Quotes About Interests

The most interesting thing is that the White House staff and the people under Donald Trump, at least some portion of them, some large portion of them, seem to have turned against Donald Trump. — David Brooks

It's part of Donald Trump's psychodynamics to always care about his press coverage intensely. He's more interested in that than anything else. — David Brooks

What's interesting about the Trump administration is how bitterly divided they are in their attitudes towards Putin. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

People ask, quite legitimately, why [Betsy] DeVos and why not a lot of the others? But it's because it has to do with the special interest groups that run a lot of Washington. — David Brooks

David Brooks Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It's not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it's deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft. — David Brooks

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

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. — David Brooks

[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. — David Brooks

This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate. — David Brooks

The policies of the Democratic Party have always been in cultural consonance with the culture of the working class. And, somehow, they missed that. — David Brooks

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.' — David Brooks

Memo to young journalists: Democratic victories are always ascribed to hope; Republican ones to rage. — David Brooks

I expect [Donald] Trump to do what he's done very successfully, which is, whether you like him or not, he will be the dominant player . — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

If done correctly, these techniques can allow the Bobo pilgrim to have 6 unforgettable moments a morning, 2 rapturous experiences over lunch, 1,5 profound insights in the afternoon (on average), and .667 life-altering epiphanies after each sunset. — David Brooks

We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness. — David Brooks

If we are going to stop wars on this earth, we are going to have to make war on hunger our number one priority. — David Brooks

The drugs are just growing all around the country, and so, it all feeds into problems that are not just urban, but are just spread throughout the country. — David Brooks

There has never been evidence that people from these [banned] countries are disproportionately likely to commit terrorist acts. We have sent chaos to the airports. We have offended the world. We have derailed the administration. We have done it in such an incompetent way, the administration has, that people with perfectly legal residence have been widely inconvenienced. — David Brooks

Since 2005, a majority of Americans, according to the Gallup poll, have said it was wrong and a mistake to go into Iraq. — David Brooks

On the [Betsy] DeVos case, I agree that the gun - her gun position is kind of weird, kind of crazy, but I do think she does know about public schools. — David Brooks

I do think economic and social anxiety is the number one issue. And I'm pretty confident Hillary Clinton will be really riding that train pretty hard. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

Every time Kellyanne Conway goes on TV, there's another fight with whoever's interviewing her that particular day. — David Brooks

Personally, I think Mitt Romney would be a great secretary of state. — David Brooks

[Mitch Daniels] was not a bad governor. He could be playful, but - or communicator.I'm just saying it will - I think will be - every candidate comes into the White House, assuming if [Hillary Clinton] wins, or if she does win, with strengths and weaknesses. This will be a weakness, because this was such an easy moment to show some heart. — David Brooks

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

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

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. — David Brooks

It’s only useful to ask, what wisdom have you learned from your misjudgments that will help you going forward? — David Brooks

People have been raised in a morality that says, "If it feels all right for you, it's probably OK." — David Brooks

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

Even in this nuclear thing, [ Donald Trump] says we should be stronger and expand. What does that mean? So, what is concrete in what he's saying? — David Brooks

Tim Kaine has been obviously a governor. He's been a senator. He's one of the smartest rising stars in the Democratic Party. He is very plausible as someone who could sit in and be president. — David Brooks

If you withdraw from the game, you're out of the game. And we have withdrawn from the game. And we said Bashar Assad has to go. He's going to stay. So we're out of the game. — David Brooks

Of course I don't know what's going on in that meeting on in the mind of Donald Trump. But I do know one of the things President Barack Obama was struck by was how much time he spent on cyber-security as president. And one of the things he said was that, in the years ahead, the next president will be spending even more time. And cyber-security isn't a thing that goes away after this election. It's a constant flow. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

The things that make them similar - their machismo, their expansionary braggadocio - is going to turn them I think into bitter and dangerous enemies. We will look back on this moment where we thought Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were sort of close as a moment of bitter irony, when they get into a schoolyard display against each other, amping up each other's worst tendencies and putting the two countries in some sort of scary position. — David Brooks

I'm not the most emotionally attuned guy in the world. My wife says that me writing about emotion is like Gandhi writing about gluttony. — David Brooks

I'm not a kicker and a screamer. — David Brooks

For the Republican Convention, I think of Trump's speech and sort of the darkness, the fear of crime, the need for a strong arm really, and so that one core theme. — David Brooks

I'm thankful that we live in a crassly commercial, polarized culture, so media jackals like me have a lot of work to do. — David Brooks

Donald Trump appalls me. I won't be shy about that. — David Brooks

When you get a big crisis, everyone wants somebody with some experience and some credibility. — David Brooks

Learning was a by-product of her search for pleasure — David Brooks

Donald Trump's world view is that it's a dangerous, miserable place, people are out to get him, and he needs to strike them first. — David Brooks

I want to limit the effects of the power of donors, no question about it. — David Brooks

If I had to fault President [Barack] Obama, I would say that sometimes governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization. — David Brooks

Jeff Sessions has some problematic spots on his history, but he has been a pretty normal, respectable senator, more conservative than a lot of us, but a respectable senator for a long period of time. — David Brooks

The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain. — David Brooks

That is the job of the Catholic Church, to be a balance to the materialistic drives of our culture and of economy. — David Brooks

Who could have predicted this, that the presidency is kind of a hard job? Nobody knew that. I also like the fact that Trump is a detail-oriented person. I find his interviews amazing. He's actually kind of remarkably candid. — David Brooks

The core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it's the [Bush] haters themselves. — David Brooks

I think we are all disgusted by the way George W. Bush's administration has allowed honesty and candor to seep into the genteel world of international affairs. — David Brooks

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

I would have swapped out Donald Trump's frontal cortex for somebody else's for a little more self-control. — David Brooks

I think Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana was a case of that, who was an outstanding administrator. — David Brooks

If Donald Trump wants to fire somebody for not getting Obamacare repealed, he should fire himself. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

I think as we interpret him and frankly as the world learns to interpret Donald Trump, are these just words that are enigmatic things floating on air or are they actually shifts in policy and will they change moment by moment, day by day without any underlying connection to the actual stuff of governance? I don't know. — David Brooks

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. — David Brooks

A lot of people think Barack Obama should have responded to the Russian hacking of the U.S. elections weeks ago, months ago. So these happened on his watch. There's nothing wrong with him dealing with it. — David Brooks

I think the voters who voted for Donald Trump certainly are willing to tolerate a lot of ugliness, but maybe, if you're in desperate circumstances, or you think America is deeply in trouble, you're willing to tolerate that without necessarily liking it. — David Brooks

I think the Barack Obama position and the majority position of American Jews and a lot of Americans is a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. Settlements get in the way of that. If they're not stopped soon, there is no prospect for that type of solution. — David Brooks

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Marine Le Pen seem to have no respect for the institutions that were created after World War II, and they see a potential alliance of populists around the world who would fight Islam and restore a certain semblance of traditional values. — David Brooks

I learned I'm not a science writer. I'm not very good at describing how something is happening. I try to describe "So What?" — David Brooks

I think the presidency is a bad way to measure the effective campaign finance, because in the presidency, there is so much publicity, there's so much money floating around. — David Brooks

It's rare in an administration for a secretary of state and a secretary of defense to get along really well. — David Brooks

I think Romney's foreign policy is sensible. — David Brooks

Things that change history tend to be organized. — David Brooks

There are no free and democratic and wealthy countries in the world that have US rate of gun violence. We have to worry about loners and alienated people. We have to do better on mental health. — David Brooks

Life Lessons by David Brooks

1. David Brooks emphasizes the importance of humility and self-awareness, encouraging us to be honest with ourselves and to recognize our own limitations.
2. He also encourages us to be open to new ideas, to challenge our own beliefs, and to strive for a greater understanding of the world around us.
3. Finally, he encourages us to be compassionate and understanding of our fellow human beings, regardless of their differences or beliefs.