Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Brooks
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 22
Editor
Journalist
Politician
Pundit
City of Toronto
Way
Realizing
Knowing
Politics
Talk
Character
Cover
Ideas
Matters
Matter
Realize
Important
Hold

More quotes by David Brooks

Image
I'm of course nostalgic for Barack Obama all of a sudden.
David Brooks
Image
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
Image
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.
David Brooks
Image
Fundamentalism is still on the march.
David Brooks
Image
Woe to you who insults the intelligence community, if you're president.
David Brooks
Image
The ugliness can sometimes be super ugly, but also a warning sign of something down below.
David Brooks
Image
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
Image
[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
Image
Creativity is not a solitary process. It happens within networks... when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge.
David Brooks
Image
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
Image
It's always dangerous to overinterpret what Donald Trump says at any one moment.
David Brooks
Image
The teachers union may not like Betsy DeVos, but she's clearly within the range of Republican policy-makers.
David Brooks
Image
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.
David Brooks
Image
Donald Trump tried to set up this debate where it was going to be globalists vs. nationalists, and the Republicans were going to be the nationalists. But, if anything, the Democrats looked more patriotic and more nationalist at the end of these two.
David Brooks
Image
Some people think humility is thinking lowly of yourself. Some people think it's not thinking about yourself. But, to me, the best definition of humility is radical self-awareness from a distance, seeing themselves from a distance and saying, what's my problem?
David Brooks
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Donald Trump's being authentic to what he ran on and what got elected.
David Brooks
Image
The more attention Hillary Clinton gives to the country, the less people seem to like her.
David Brooks
Image
Hillary Clinton is still - she's such a private person.
David Brooks