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I happen to think most people go into government do it for the right reasons and they really do things as they see them on the merits of the issues.

David Brooks

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David Brooks
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 22
Editor
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City of Toronto
Government
Reason
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More quotes by David Brooks

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Israel is a country of six million people. They need the U.S. It used to be bipartisan on Israeli politics. You never messed with that relationship. The fact that [ Benjamin] Netanyahu is willing to do that, I thought would horrify voters more than it turned out it did.
David Brooks
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Republicans are living in a hermetically sealed Republican universe, just as Democrats are. And so they're responding to their own universe, even if it leads to electoral downfall.
David Brooks
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When you talk about the problem of illegal immigration, people are angry and polarized. When you talk about the answers, the debate gets a little different.
David Brooks
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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.
David Brooks
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People want reality that tells them how right they are all the time.
David Brooks
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People tend to marry people with similar-width noses, eyes similarly apart, with complementary immune systems.
David Brooks
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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.
David Brooks
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Two terrible behaviors don't make a good behavior.
David Brooks
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Everyone is dividing based on demographic categories.
David Brooks
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I don't think history will ever be a science because history will never be reduced to law-like behavior. People are to unpredictable.
David Brooks
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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
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Even in this nuclear thing, [ Donald Trump] says we should be stronger and expand. What does that mean? So, what is concrete in what he's saying?
David Brooks
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I'm thankful that we live in a crassly commercial, polarized culture, so media jackals like me have a lot of work to do.
David Brooks
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For the Republican Convention, I think of Trump's speech and sort of the darkness, the fear of crime, the need for a strong arm really, and so that one core theme.
David Brooks
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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.
David Brooks
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I think Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana was a case of that, who was an outstanding administrator.
David Brooks
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We're no longer living in Tammany Hall America.
David Brooks
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We pretend to be a middle class, democratic nation, but in reality we love our blue bloods. ... We love the prep school manners, the aristocratic calm, the Skull and Bones mystery, the dappled lawns stretching before New England summer homes. How else can be explained the Bush vs. Kerry match-up that confronts us this year?
David Brooks
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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.
David Brooks
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We are all fundamentally equal souls, and if you make a zillion dollars, you're not any better than anybody else spiritually. You're still an equal soul.
David Brooks