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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

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David Brooks
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 22
Editor
Journalist
Politician
Pundit
City of Toronto
Successful
Actually
Long
Think
Madman
Thinking
Madmen
Effective
Theory
Crazy

More quotes by David Brooks

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Woe to you who insults the intelligence community, if you're president.
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I think Romney's foreign policy is sensible.
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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.
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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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I sort of feel we have to owe some respect to the process and owe some respect to the electorate and the people who voted Donald Trump, on the assumption that they have something to teach us.
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I do think Donald Trump is a fundamentally unstabilizing force and that the people who swore to uphold the Constitution are going to have to take some measures at some point.
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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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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.
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The drugs are just growing all around the country, and so, it all feeds into problems that are not just urban, but are just spread throughout the country.
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On the [Betsy] DeVos case, I agree that the gun - her gun position is kind of weird, kind of crazy, but I do think she does know about public schools.
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Britain is blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous.
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I am not a Jew for Jesus but I am definitely a Jew for Christmas. Christmas is one of the best things you Christians have given us, along with mac and cheese, Bono, croquet and politeness.
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I'm of course nostalgic for Barack Obama all of a sudden.
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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?
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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.
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Maybe you're willing to tolerate a lot of bigotry from Donald Trump if you say, just change things, just change things.
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If we're in some sort of Hobbesian state of nature, where you just want a strong man who has no compassion Donald Trump is going to do a little better. So, we will figure out what game we're playing.
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Putin is someone who has been undermining the norms of what we consider the world order since he got into power and in increasing success.
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The effectiveness of a group of people is not determined by their IQ but by how well they communicate.
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If you're cutting deals with one company or another, eventually, there's going to be a quid pro quo. There's going to be a bribe. There's going to be something.
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