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

David Brooks

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David Brooks
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 22
Editor
Journalist
Politician
Pundit
City of Toronto
Happens
Thinking
Primarily
Products
Awareness
Level
Levels

More quotes by David Brooks

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If you grow up in a home where actions don't lead to predictable consequences, you don't develop strategies to control your impulses.
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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.
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Certainly, the country can't have two presidents at once, so the tradition has been to hang back if you're the president-elect and wait for your time in office. [Donald] Trump is not a hang-back kind of guy.
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Everyone is dividing based on demographic categories.
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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.
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Our system is not only based on rules, but a series of self-restraints that we won't be as barbaric as we could be in competing for power because we know if we're all barbaric as we could be, the whole country and the whole society falls apart.
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We live in a culture that encourages us to be big about ourselves, and I think the starting point of trying to build inner goodness is to be a little bit smaller about yourself.
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I think the Republican budget priorities are messed up. I salute for the way they're attacking some of the entitlement programs, but they are taking huge cuts, by pretending they're just block-granting it to the states, out of Medicaid, from the least fortunate.
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Trade has suddenly become massively unpopular. I think that's massively unjust. I think free trade has been wonderful for America on balance.
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It's just a lot safer to be an incumbent. So I think they have used the campaign finance reforms. They have passed laws that will help themselves stay in office. And I think that's one of the flaws that we do have in the system.
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I wouldn't say philosophy and theology are dead. Brain science doesn't invent new philosophies but it helps remind us which of our existing philosophies are more true.
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... trash talk ... Washington floats on a river of aspersion.
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The legitimacy of a war is not established by how it is organized but by what it achieves.
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We have the choice to choose how we're going to educate our emotions.
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If you're cutting deals with one company or another, eventually, there's going to be a quid pro quo. There's going to be a bribe. There's going to be something.
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Fundamentalism is still on the march.
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Since 2005, a majority of Americans, according to the Gallup poll, have said it was wrong and a mistake to go into Iraq.
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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.
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The idea that Russia felt emboldened and apparently fearless to go into our election and manipulate our own election process, whether successfully or not, is a sign that they are outside the norms of normal society.
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The ugliness can sometimes be super ugly, but also a warning sign of something down below.
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