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

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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

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Our emotions tell us what to value. They're like a little GPS system: Go that way. Don't go that way.
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The technology's going to change, but what people want to read is going to be basically the same.
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With a normal president like President [Barack] Obama, he says a word, and that's because there has been some thought that he's done and there had been policy papers and there's been aides and there's been advisers and then there is a connection to an actual set of policies. And so, the words like have roots into actual stuff.
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Often, I go and see films where I can see the beats coming. So, if I read something where I don't see the beats coming and it takes me somewhere unexpected, that's a great thing to build upon.
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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 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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Politics really is a team sport. You really have to work the whole system to get somewhere down the road.
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Trump has picked the more extreme versions of all Republicans so far, the more aggressive. And I think the thing to watch out for is, I could totally paint a scenario where Trump runs an authoritarian regime. I can totally paint a scenario where he has no control over his own government.
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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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Donald Trump's got to do some big changes, because what he was voted on. But when you think about how to do it, it would take massive expertise, which his people, believe me, do not have.
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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
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Courage is the most important virtue because it is the hardest.
David Brooks
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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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Freedom without structure is its own slavery.
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[Donald Trump] has shifted - President [Barack] Obama has shifted American policy in a much more critical way in Israel with the settlements than the previous presidents.
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Clearly, politics is a team sport. Trump is not so much of a team player.
David Brooks
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That is the job of the Catholic Church, to be a balance to the materialistic drives of our culture and of economy.
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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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Every White House I have covered since Reagan, when I got here, power has been more concentrated in the White House than the one before.
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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.
David Brooks