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

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David Brooks
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 22
Editor
Journalist
Politician
Pundit
City of Toronto
Came
Tails
Happy
Settle
Making
Reaction
Flips
Tell
Settling
Flipping
Mind
Heads
Coin
Something
Reactions
Coins
Emotional
Flip
Trouble
Graduation

More quotes by David Brooks

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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.
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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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I do think trying to live each day as a bunch of moral occasions, did I live up to what I would hope, and, if I didn't, what can I do tomorrow to be a little better, I do think we can improve. We get better at life as we get older.
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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.
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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.
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I wasn't born with a tie or with Mark Shields stapled to my left hip. I have another life.
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I'm not a kicker and a screamer.
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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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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.
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I don't blame the Democrats for fighting. They have got a very energized base. And there is a lot to complain about a lot of these nominees. But I think, if you are actually going to turn someone down from a president's [Donald Trump] own Cabinet, it better be a lot more egregious than the cases we have seen.
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The idea that when you correct a fact, you erase that fact from people's memories is the reverse of the truth. When you correct a fact, what you do is you further lodge that fact into people's minds, and they remember the error.
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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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What's interesting about the Trump administration is how bitterly divided they are in their attitudes towards Putin.
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I think charter schools, choice, and frankly school standards need a champion.
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My colleague Ross Douthat wrote that any time you give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, he always lets you down.
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Some children lack tools to see their course in the world in far-sighted ways. Just introducing school vouchers won't change that. You have to have nurse-home partnerships, early childhood education, mentoring programs and so on. People learn from people they love.
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The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.
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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.
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The core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it's the [Bush] haters themselves.
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We actually have to have a government. We have to have people confirmed and put into office.
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