Quote

The madman theory is that you can be a successful deterrer if you - if they think you could be crazy. And so I think it can be very effective, so long as you're not actually crazy.

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
Thinking
Madmen
Effective
Theory
Crazy
Successful
Actually
Long
Think
Madman

More quotes by 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
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.
David Brooks
Image
Nonetheless, so whether it's unconstitutional or not [for judges to overruling presidents], I leave to others.
David Brooks
Image
Just, as I have traveled around from school to school, whether it's project-based learning or an outward bound curriculum, it's very hard to tell the difference between charters and public anymore. There's no fine line.
David Brooks
Image
Basically, less educated or high school-educated whites are going to Donald Trump. It doesn't matter what the guy does. And college-educated going to Hillary Clinton.
David Brooks
Image
If you grow up in a home where actions don't lead to predictable consequences, you don't develop strategies to control your impulses.
David Brooks
Image
The core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it's the [Bush] haters themselves.
David Brooks
Image
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.
David Brooks
Image
If you withdraw from the game, you're out of the game. And we have withdrawn from the game. And we said Bashar Assad has to go. He's going to stay. So we're out of the game.
David Brooks
Image
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.
David Brooks
Image
I generally think the president [Donald Trump] should get his Cabinet picks, unless they're egregiously out of the range, either ethically or intellectually out of the range of what's acceptable.
David Brooks
Image
The policies of the Democratic Party have always been in cultural consonance with the culture of the working class. And, somehow, they missed that.
David Brooks
Image
One of the frustrations about the modern world is that we don't even have a good vocabulary to describe our state. The word sentiment sounds mushy. [...] Sentiment is not mushy.
David Brooks
Image
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.
David Brooks
Image
Most people don't form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.
David Brooks
Image
The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain.
David Brooks
Image
One of the things this world is finding is that emotion is the basis of reason. We really have to trust our emotions, which are much smarter than our reason in some ways.
David Brooks
Image
There is the English language and then there's the Trump language.
David Brooks
Image
The idea that a big country is going to go out and send troops into some country to take their resources, and then the rest of the world is going to somehow trust us is just a ridiculous notion.
David Brooks
Image
It's impossible for one person to think of everything.
David Brooks