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You have to have a plan, or else you're just creating a recipe for chaos.

David Brooks

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David Brooks
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 22
Editor
Journalist
Politician
Pundit
City of Toronto
Recipe
Recipes
Chaos
Plan
Creating
Plans
Else

More quotes by David Brooks

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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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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.
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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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I think that it's an arguable position, whether with Hamas and ISIS around, whether there should be a Palestinian state, but it's a defensible position, given the current circumstances.
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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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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 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?
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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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People want reality that tells them how right they are all the time.
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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.
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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.
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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 gun becomes this psychological totem, this thing of who I am. And it's almost as if using the gun is going to be the thing that's going to be my expression of how I make a difference in the world.
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The legitimacy of a war is not established by how it is organized but by what it achieves.
David Brooks
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Memo to young journalists: Democratic victories are always ascribed to hope Republican ones to rage.
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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.
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Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.
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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
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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.
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I think Americans expect optimism in their leadership. The most popular and effective leaders, whether it was Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or Jack Kennedy, brought to it a sense of optimism and possibility.
David Brooks