Background Image

...

I Do Not Believe That Anything Like What Donald Trump Just Proposed Is Going To Get Through Congress. Those Deductions Have A Lot Of Defenders. The Idea That They're Going To Completely Explode The Deficit Is Just A Party Killer For The Republican Parties.

-David Brooks

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Do Not Believe

David Brooks

...

I Do Not Believe That Anything Like What Donald Trump Just Proposed Is Going To Get Through Congress. Those Deductions Have A Lot Of Defenders. The Idea That They're Going To Completely Explode The Deficit Is Just A Party Killer For The Republican Parties.

Views: 6

Topic

More From David Brooks

The Three People Who Are Most Often Talked About With Hillary Clinton, Whether It's Tim Kaine Or Vilsack Or Cory Booker, They Are Three Extremely Nice People.

The Question Is Whether Donald Trump Recognizes That Vladimir Putin Is A Bad Guy. And I Guess There's No Indication That He Regards Putin As In Any Way A Bad Guy.

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.

Every Time Kellyanne Conway Goes On Tv, There's Another Fight With Whoever's Interviewing Her That Particular Day.

Bill Clinton Pandered By Telling You What You Wanted To Hear. John Kerry Panders By Never Telling You What You Don't Want To Hear. This Is Negative Pandering; He Talks A Lot Without Really Ruling Anything Out So You Can Draw Your Own Conclusions.....kerry Has Been Talking For Years, And Yet Such Is The Thicket Of His Verbiage That He Has Achieved Almost Complete Strategic Ambiguity.

Donald Trump's Ego Is Like A Comet The Size Of Jupiter Just Traveling Through The Solar System, And We All Have To Be Affected By Its Gravitational Pull.

For Those Of Us Who Believe In It, There Has To Be A Movement That Says, "we Still Believe In Trade. We Still Believe In International Engagement For America. But For Those Losers Or Those Who Are Suffering, We've Got Your Back."

Stairway To Wisdom”) David Brooks Detailed The Needed Ingredients To Gaining A Deep Understanding Of A Social Problem, Beginning With The Data And Moving On To First-hand Accounts. The Highest Rung On His Stairway, Though, Went Beyond Those: “empathy Opens You Up To Absorb The Good And The Bad. Love Impels You Not Just To Observe But To Seek Union—to Think As Another Thinks And Feel As Another Feels.

I Want To Make Big Films. That's Always Been My Ambition.

Basically, Global Capitalism, Basically To Support It, Or Is It To Be Opposed? Is International Order To Be Supported, Or Is It To Be Opposed? Republicans Have Taken A Very Clear Line. Democrats Can Have A Different Version Of The Line, Or They Can Just Say, No, We Are The Party Of International Peace And Activism, And We're The Party That's Going To Have A Civilized Capitalism.

Labor-rich Manufacturing Doesn't Exist Anymore. Manufacturing Jobs Are White-collar, Silicon Valley Programmers Or Highly-skilled Technicians. They Are Not Going To Employ Lots Of People.

America Has An Important Role To Play As The World Leader In Creating A Global Order, Free Trade, Free Waterways, Free Commerce, Free Movement Of People. That Happens Because Of U.s. Military Might.

We Have An International System. We All Profit From It. Trade Profits From It. Peace. We Can Travel Around The World Because Of It. And Part Of That System Is Certain Ideas, The Certain Ideas You Can't Invade Other Countries For No Reason. You Can't Commit Genocide. You Can't - Rogue Regimes Can't Have Nuclear Weapons, And You Can't Gas Your Own People.

If You Grow Up In A Home Where Actions Don't Lead To Predictable Consequences, You Don't Develop Strategies To Control Your Impulses.

Putin's An Egomaniac, So There Are Two Ways He Can Process His Ego Mania. He Can Say, "oh, I Stood Up To The U.s.," Or, "hey, I'm Essential To The World Order."

With The Case Of [mike] Pence, Giving A Little Aurora Of Likability To A Candidate, A Lead Candidate Who's A Little Lacking In That Department.

I Came To The Conclusion Is That We Have A Very Shallow View Of Human Nature In The Policy World. We're Really Good At Talking About Material Things, Really Bad At Talking About Emotions, Really Good At Stuff We Can Count, Really Bad At The Deeper Stuff That Actually Drives Behavior.

A Heroic Moral Victory For The New York Mets. It May Be The Only Kind Of Victory We're Achieving This Season, But He Set A Good Example For Professional Athletes And The Rest Of Us.

I Don't Think History Will Ever Be A Science Because History Will Never Be Reduced To Law-like Behavior. People Are To Unpredictable.

The Brain Writes The Autobiography Of Our Species At The Conscious Level.

Politics Is Based On Social Identity, And So, Again, There Is Going To Be Differences Between Rural And Urban And Between Left And Right.

Recovering From Suffering Is Not Like Recovering From A Disease. Many People Don’t Come Out Healed; They Come Out Different. They Crash Through The Logic Of Individual Utility And Behave Paradoxically. Instead Of Recoiling From The Sorts Of Loving Commitments That Almost Always Involve Suffering, They Throw Themselves More Deeply Into Them. Even While Experiencing The Worst And Most Lacerating Consequences, Some People Double Down On Vulnerability. They Hurl Themselves Deeper And Gratefully Into Their Art, Loved Ones And Commitments.

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?

Barack Obama Won Such A Big Electoral Mandate Because A Lot Of People Thought He Was - Transcended Partisan And Ideological Barriers And Was Going To Put Aside The Old Debates. So, He Was Able To Get A Lot Of Moderates And A Lot Of Independents.

I Expect [donald] Trump To Do What He's Done Very Successfully, Which Is, Whether You Like Him Or Not, He Will Be The Dominant Player .

The Politics Is Broken Up And Down. And Trump May Emerge From A Reality Tv World That Is Much More Powerful Than We Think. And There Is The Prospect That This Is Where We Are, Which Is An Horrific Thought.

Parties That Are Majority Parties Are Incoherent Parties.

Donald Trump Tried To Set Up This Debate Where It Was Going To Be Globalists Vs. Nationalists, And The Republicans Were Going To Be The Nationalists. But, If Anything, The Democrats Looked More Patriotic And More Nationalist At The End Of These Two.

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?

This Is How Life Works. Deciding Whom To Love Is Not An Alien Form Of Decision-making , A Romantic Interlude In The Midst Of Normal Life. Instead, Decisions About Whom To Love Are More Intense Versions Of The Sorts Of Decisions We Make Throughout The Course Of Our Existence, From What Kind Of Gelato To Order To What Career To Pursue. Living Is An Inherently Emotional Business.

I Would Have Swapped Out Donald Trump's Frontal Cortex For Somebody Else's For A Little More Self-control.

It’s Worth Noting That You Can Devote Your Life To Community Service And Be A Total Schmuck. You Can Spend Your Life On Wall Street And Be A Hero

I'm Beginning To Think [ted] Cruz Had A Good Convention, That If [donald] Trump Goes Down, Cruz Is Pretty Well Positioned To Be The Republican Major Figure In Four, Six Or Even Within Two Years.

It's Almost Inherent, But I'm A Massive Stanley Kubrick Fan. I'm A Big Admirer Of What Guys Like Christopher Nolan Have Been Able To Do. For Me, To Be Able To Try To Make Big Films That Reach A Lot Of People, And That Hopefully Have Something To Say, Is A Lofty Goal, But That's My Goal.

Betsy Devos Is Not The Most Informed Person On Education Policy, But I Have Seen Her Present A Few Times, And She Presents As A Pretty Respectable, Intelligent Person Who Has Cared Passionately About Education And Cares About Charter Schools.

Donald Trump Didn't Emerge From The Orthodoxy Of The Republican Party. And So There's Going To Be Bigger Differences Than Normal.

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.

If We Got Rid Of Everybody In Washington Who Sold Access For Donations, Then The Town Would Be Empty. But It's Unseemly.

... Trash Talk ... Washington Floats On A River Of Aspersion.

Some Children Lack Tools To See Their Course In The World In Far-sighted Ways. Just Introducing School Vouchers Won't Change That. You Have To Have Nurse-home Partnerships, Early Childhood Education, Mentoring Programs And So On. People Learn From People They Love.

Charter Schools Are Public Schools. They're Paid For Publicly And They're Part Of The Public System. They Just Have A More Independent Structure.

Courage Is The Most Important Virtue Because It Is The Hardest.

You Figure Out, What Is The Crucial Issue Facing The Country Right Now? And For Trump, It Was That The Global Economy And The International World Order Were Failing Regular People.

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.

If There Is A Series Of Attacks Like That Or, God Forbid, If Isis Is Really Sending Soldiers Across Europe And Maybe Across The World For A Barrage Of These Things, Then The Political Climate Is Revolutionized Here. And Maybe The [donald] Trump Speech Will Look Like A Precursor To A Climate That We're All About To Walk Into.

There Was This Famous Clash Of Civilization Thesis From Samuel Huntington, A Political Theorist. And The Idea Was That Western Civilization Is At War With Islam And Maybe Some Of The Other Civilizations Around The World. And I Don't Agree With That. But I Do Think There Is Such A Thing As Western Civilization. I Think It Starts With The Greeks And The Romans. Then It Goes Through The Enlightenment - Or The Reformation, The Enlightenment. It Goes Through The Scientific Age. And It Somewhat Defines Some Of The Cultures And Mores Of Europe And North America And Some Other Countries.

It's Impossible For One Person To Think Of Everything.

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.

You Have To Have A Plan, Or Else You're Just Creating A Recipe For Chaos.

Donald Trump's Being Authentic To What He Ran On And What Got Elected.

Being Authentic

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.

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.

I Just Think, Realistically, There's A Lot Of Room Outside The Trump Populist Right And The Bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren Populist Left. There Are A Lot Of Us Who Believe In Open Trade, Open Borders, A Dynamic Forward-looking Economy, Not A Nostalgic Economy, But Do Want To Provide A Significant Level Of Social Service Or Sort Of Economic Milton Friedman Foreign Policy, Ronald Reagan Domestic Policy, Franklin Roosevelt. And There's A Lot Of Room In The Center.

The Point Of Being A Teacher Is To Do More Than Impart Facts, It's To Shape The Way Students Perceive The World, To Help A Student Absorb The Rules Of A Discipline. The Teachers Who Do That Get Remembered.

Much Of Life Is About Failure, Whether We Acknowledge It Or Not, And Your Destiny Is Profoundly Shaped By How Effectively You Learn From And Adapt To Failure.

The Public Is Not Only Shifting From Left To Right. Every Single Idea Associated With The Educated Class Has Grown More Unpopular Over The Past Year. . . . A Year Ago, The Obama Supporters Were The Passionate Ones. Now The Tea Party Brigades Have All The Intensity.

We Are A Democratic, Egalitarian People Who Spend Our Days Desperately Trying To Climb Over Each Other.

For Us Going Forward, It's To Not Reverse The Dynamism Of American Society And The Diversity. It's To Pay Attention To The People Who Are Being Ruined By It, And So This Doesn't Happen Again.

I Generally Think Debates Within A Party Should Not Be Treated As A Scandal. They Should Be Treated As A Sign Of Strength, To Be Honest.

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.

Fundamentalism Is Still On The March.

Big Brother Is Not The Only Danger Facing The Country. Another Is The Rising Tide Of Distrust, The Corrosive Spread Of Cynicism, The Fraying Of The Social Fabric And The Rise Of People Who Are So Individualistic In Their Outlook That They Have No Real Understanding Of How To Knit Others Together And Look After The Common Good.

If You Do Have To Look At Polls, You Should Do It No More Than Once Every Few Days, To Get A General Sense Of The State Of The Race. I've Seen The Work On Information Overload, Which Makes People Depressed, Stressed And Freezes Their Brains. I Know That Checking The Polls Constantly Is A Recipe For Self-deception And Anxiety.

What Bannon And Trump Have Presented Us With Is An Idea Of America That's Not Been The Traditional Idea, Not The Walt Whitman Idea, Not The George Washington, Abraham Lincoln Idea, Which Is One Of Welcoming Because We're The Last, Best Hope Of Earth.

A Lot Of People Think Barack Obama Should Have Responded To The Russian Hacking Of The U.s. Elections Weeks Ago, Months Ago. So These Happened On His Watch. There's Nothing Wrong With Him Dealing With It.

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.

I Do Think British And American Politics Rhyme. They Go In Cycles. They Go In Thatcher-reagan Cycles, Blair-clinton Cycles.

I Don't Know If I'm Sexist, Though I Have Not Paid Much Attention To The Women's Bracket.

Memo To Young Journalists: Democratic Victories Are Always Ascribed To Hope; Republican Ones To Rage.

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.

Donald Trump Is This Whirling Dervish Of Chaos. He Picked A Fight With Mexico. Germany Is Not Far Behind. He Will Pick A Fight With Them. He Will Pick A Fight With China, Which Would Be Truly Cataclysmic.

I Think Mitch Daniels, The Former Governor Of Indiana Was A Case Of That, Who Was An Outstanding Administrator.

The Thing That Should Most Concern Us Is A Shift In American Foreign Policy. We Have Had A Bipartisan Belief In American Foreign Policy Based On The Post-world War Ii Institutions That Believed In Democratic Global World, Which Russia And The Soviet Union Was Often Seen As Hostile To. And Most Republicans And Democrats Have Always Basically Believed In This World Order. Donald Trump And Vladimir Putin And Maybe Marine Le Pen Do Not Agree With This Basic Structure Of The World.

There Is The English Language And Then There's The Trump Language.

English Language

You Have Got To Be Loyal To People Beneath You.

If You Go In A Confirmation Process, You're Going To Be Asked About The Embarrassing Or Stupid Things You Said. You Should Have A View.

The Party Cannot Be Competitive Nationally Unless It's Competitive In California, Oregon, Washington, New England, Pennsylvania, Along The Coasts. And The Problem For The Party Is, You Can't Get There From Here. You Can't Start Out Where The Current Republicans Are And Win Back Those Places. To Me, What You Have To Do Is Create A Different Republican Party That Can Win In Those Places.

Clearly, Politics Is A Team Sport. Trump Is Not So Much Of A Team Player.

If Donald Trump Wants To Fire Somebody For Not Getting Obamacare Repealed, He Should Fire Himself.

Civility Is The Natural State For People Who Know How Limited Their Own Individual Powers Are And Know, Too, That They Need The Conversation.

Individual Power

Trade Agreements Are A Net Benefit For The World, And A Net Benefit For Our Foreign Policy, And In The Long Run, Given The Dislocations, Are A Net Benefit For Us, Too.

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.

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.

If We Are Going To Stop Wars On This Earth, We Are Going To Have To Make War On Hunger Our Number One Priority.

What's Sort Of Remarkable Is That, Especially In The Israel And The Russia Cases, You Have Got A U.s. Citizen, Donald Trump, Siding With A Foreign Leader Against The U.s. President. There Is A Reason Why President-elects Have Tried To Remain Mute During Their Transitional Periods, Relatively, Because You Just Don't Want To Be For Somebody - Some Other Country Against Your Own Government, And Especially When You're About To Take The Helm Of That Government.

Two Terrible Behaviors Don't Make A Good Behavior.

Personally, I Think Mitt Romney Would Be A Great Secretary Of State.

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

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.

Jim Stavridis Is The Former Nato Commander Who Is Sometimes On People's Lists, Also Very Plausible, Self-possessed, Someone With Sobriety.

The Technology's Going To Change, But What People Want To Read Is Going To Be Basically The Same.

The Key Factor Separating Geniuses From The Merely Accomplished Is Not A Divine Spark. It's Not I.q., A Generally Bad Predictor Of Success, Even In Realms Like Chess. Instead, It's Deliberate Practice. Top Performers Spend More Hours (many More Hours) Rigorously Practicing Their Craft.

The Core Threat To Democracy Is Not In The White House, It's The [bush] Haters Themselves.

If Donald Trump Is Just Tweeting About A Union Guy, Then He's Just Being The Bully We Have Seen. But If He Uses The Power Of The Presidency To Back Up Some Of Those Tweets And He's Really, Really Coming Down With A Hammer On People He Doesn't Like Using The Power Of The Presidency, Then We're Seeing Something Very New And Very Different.

Of Course I Don't Know What's Going On In That Meeting On In The Mind Of Donald Trump. But I Do Know One Of The Things President Barack Obama Was Struck By Was How Much Time He Spent On Cyber-security As President. And One Of The Things He Said Was That, In The Years Ahead, The Next President Will Be Spending Even More Time. And Cyber-security Isn't A Thing That Goes Away After This Election. It's A Constant Flow.

To Explain The Unknown By The Known Is A Logical Procedure; To Explain The Known By The Unknown Is A Form Of Theological Lunacy.

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.

The Natural Human Reaction Is To Greet Hatred With Hatred, Revenge By Revenge. That's The Natural Genetic Reaction.

[donald Trump] Will Be The One On Offense. He Will Be The One Serving Volleys, And It May Be Some Weird Stuff About The Russians, But He Will Be Controlling Things A Little More Than He Probably Did Over The Last Two Weeks.

If I Had To Fault President [barack] Obama, I Would Say That Sometimes Governs Like A Visitor From A Morally Superior Civilization.

I Think Trump's Attention Span Is Super Low. I Don't Think He Has The Expertise To Actually Run A Foreign Policy.

I Was Really Fortunate That I Went To A High School Where We Actually Had A Film Theory Program.

What You Hear In Focus Groups And Conversations, People Will Give You 20 Minutes Of Rage About How The Borders Are Out Of Control. But Then You Start Saying, Practically, What Are We Going To Do About It? What Are We Going To Do About The 11 Million Here? What Are We Going To Do To Get Some Workers We Need For The Farms? Then People Start Having A Normal Conversation.

Donald Trump Is So Egregious In The Way He Talks About Women, The Way He Allegedly Treated Women.

Trade Has Suddenly Become Massively Unpopular. I Think That's Massively Unjust. I Think Free Trade Has Been Wonderful For America On Balance.

I Think The Voters Who Voted For Donald Trump Certainly Are Willing To Tolerate A Lot Of Ugliness, But Maybe, If You're In Desperate Circumstances, Or You Think America Is Deeply In Trouble, You're Willing To Tolerate That Without Necessarily Liking It.

The Legitimacy Of A War Is Not Established By How It Is Organized But By What It Achieves.

Marital Happiness Is Far More Important Than Anything Else In Determining Personal Well-being.

Who Could Have Predicted This, That The Presidency Is Kind Of A Hard Job? Nobody Knew That. I Also Like The Fact That Trump Is A Detail-oriented Person. I Find His Interviews Amazing. He's Actually Kind Of Remarkably Candid.

I'm Thankful That We Live In A Crassly Commercial, Polarized Culture, So Media Jackals Like Me Have A Lot Of Work To Do.

Things That Change History Tend To Be Organized.

Since 2005, A Majority Of Americans, According To The Gallup Poll, Have Said It Was Wrong And A Mistake To Go Into Iraq.

I Would Like To See An Animating Passion. Tim Kaine Actually Had A Good Line. What Animated You Before You Got Into Politics? And She Actually Does Have A Story There To Tell About Children. And So Drawing That Animating Passion Will Do Good.

It's A Completely Irrational Decision To Drop Out Of School.

I Think Actually In Any Party It's A Sign Of General Health To Have Different Views, And Especially On The Subject Of Trade.

Populists Hate Journalists, They Hate Teachers, They Hate Lawyers, But They Tend To Like Rich People. There's Something Deeply Consistent.

People Want Reality That Tells Them How Right They Are All The Time.

If You're A Soldier Or Marine In An Arab Country, Islam Is The Solution. And You Need To Show Respect.

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.

Research By Donald A. Redelmeier And Sheldon M. Singh Has Found That, On Average, Oscar Winners Live Nearly Four Years Longer Than Nominees That Don't Win.

What's Interesting About The Trump Administration Is How Bitterly Divided They Are In Their Attitudes Towards Putin.

It's Important For Presidents To Emotionally Connect, With The Country In Times Of Crisis, But Also With People In Washington. If You Can't Emotionally Connect - And [barack] Obama Is Not The Greatest, But He Can At Least Do It - Then People Won't Be With You When The Times Are Hard.

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.

The Ugliness Can Sometimes Be Super Ugly, But Also A Warning Sign Of Something Down Below.

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.

I Think The Barack Obama Position And The Majority Position Of American Jews And A Lot Of Americans Is A Two-state Solution Between Israel And Palestine. Settlements Get In The Way Of That. If They're Not Stopped Soon, There Is No Prospect For That Type Of Solution.

Plunder Is Morally Wrong. It Ruins Your Credibility.

The Most Interesting Thing Is That The White House Staff And The People Under Donald Trump, At Least Some Portion Of Them, Some Large Portion Of Them, Seem To Have Turned Against Donald Trump.

It's Just A Lot Safer To Be An Incumbent. So I Think They Have Used The Campaign Finance Reforms. They Have Passed Laws That Will Help Themselves Stay In Office. And I Think That's One Of The Flaws That We Do Have In The System.

Sometimes, You Go - You Achieve A Few Things In Life. I Have Achieved More Career Success Than I Ever Experienced Or That I Ever Thought. And I Just Realized, It Doesn't Make You Happy. It's An Elemental Truth. It's So True.

Economists Sometimes Do Try To Reduce Behavior To Law-like Predictability. But People Respond Differently To Different Primes, To Different Contexts Even From One Moment To The Next. We Possess Multiple Selves That Are Aroused By Different Circumstances.

What Family You Were Born Into Matters So Much More Than It Did Before In A Perverse Way.

It's Hard To Imagine A Party That Is Not Corrupted By Hatred.

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.

Our Emotions Tell Us What To Value. They're Like A Little Gps System: Go That Way. Don't Go That Way.

When You're Running For President, You're A Guest In The Living Room For Four Years. And If People Don't Think You're Going To Be Around The Living Room As A Pleasant Experience, They're Not Going To Vote For You Even If They Agree With You.

In My View, Success Is Earned Externally By Being Better Than Other People. But Character, That Sort Of Unfakeable Goodness, Is Earned By Being Better Than You Used To Be. And It's About Self-confrontation.

Democrats In Environmental Agencies Tend To Be More Sensitive To Environmental Harm. And Republicans Tend To Be More Sensitive To Business Harm.

I Do Not Believe That Anything Like What Donald Trump Just Proposed Is Going To Get Through Congress. Those Deductions Have A Lot Of Defenders. The Idea That They're Going To Completely Explode The Deficit Is Just A Party Killer For The Republican Parties.

Donald Trump Just Needs The Ego Fed All The Time.

President-elect [donald] Trump's Ambassador To Israel Is Further To The Right Than Almost Anyone In Israel, Further To The Right Than Bibi Netanyahu On The Settlements, And Almost Opposes The Two-state Solution, Doesn't He?

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.

I Really Think Of [donald] Trump Erratic. I Think That Was The Big Message That Came Out. The Positive Agenda For Hillary [clinton] Was A Little Less Vibrant.

Mitt Romney Knows A Lot. He's A Very Professional - A Consummate Professional.

There Will Just Always Be A Distance Between You And The People Around You. Now, [hillary Clinton] Can Clearly Emotionally Connect With Her Intimates Within The Zone Of Trust. It's Just The Wall Outside The Zone Of Trust Is So Impermeable.

I Think There Are Two Basic Approaches You Can Use For Campaign Finance. One Is Complete Openness, Everybody Knows Absolutely Everything, But No Limits. But You Let People Decide.the Other Is Just Have A National Public System.

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.

I Certainly Hear A Lot Of People Say That Donald Trump Not Only Incited Some Bad Things. He Also Exposed Some Things. He Exposed Pain In America That A Lot Of Us Didn't Have The Full Extent Of, Some Of The Divisions And Chasms In The Country.

I Want To Limit The Effects Of The Power Of Donors, No Question About It.

Palin Is Smart, Politically Skilled, Courageous And Likable. Her Convention And Debate Performances Were Impressive.

If Done Correctly, These Techniques Can Allow The Bobo Pilgrim To Have 6 Unforgettable Moments A Morning, 2 Rapturous Experiences Over Lunch, 1,5 Profound Insights In The Afternoon (on Average), And .667 Life-altering Epiphanies After Each Sunset.

When Your Institution Is Under Threat, You Feel You Have A Lot Of Hostility, You Feel Things Are Slipping Away, You Have Got Internal Problems, There's A Tendency To Turn Inward And To Focus On Yourselves.

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.

When You're In Governance, You Understand The Limitations And The Complexities Of Governance.

The Incumbents Just Have A Ton More Money Because They Have Rigged The System To Help Themselves, Because They Have These Networks Of Small Donors. Meanwhile, The Amount Of People, The Incumbents Being Reelected Has Just Been - That Has Been Going Up And Up And Up.

We Shouldn't Just Allow Gay Marriage. We Should Insist On Gay Marriage. We Should Regard It As Scandalous That Two People Could Claim To Love Each Other And Not Want To Sanctify Their Love With Marriage And Fidelity.

One Of The Things I Think About With Donald Trump Is What Are His Words Actually Attached To? With Trump, I'm Not Sure The Words Have Roots. They Are Emanations Of His Psyche, But Has He Thought It Through? Is There An Argument, Is There A Policy Implication?

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.

Pain Now Is Better Than Pain Deferred.

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.

We Are Primarily The Products Of Thinking That Happens Below The Level Of Awareness.

Of Those Two [hillary Clinton And Donald Trump], I Do Think That The - Right Now, At Least In My Mind, The Democratic Theme Is Eclipsing The Republican One.

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.

The Teachers Union May Not Like Betsy Devos, But She's Clearly Within The Range Of Republican Policy-makers.

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.

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.

I Think Donald Trump Is Going To Find It Very Hard To Do The Kind Of Massive Change He Wants.

Everyone Is Dividing Based On Demographic Categories.

Decision-making Power, Whether It's On Foreign Affairs Or Domestic Affairs, Is Concentrated In The White House In A Reasonably Small Circle.

The Effectiveness Of A Group Of People Is Not Determined By Their Iq But By How Well They Communicate.

This Death Cult Has No Reason And Is Beyond Negotiation. This Is What Makes It So Frightening. This Is What Causes So Many To Engage In A Sort Of Mental Diversion. They Don't Want To Confront This Horror. So They Rush Off In Search Of More Comprehensible Things To Hate.

I've Observed A Few Things About The Few Really Great People I've Had A Chance To Meet And Cover...they Need To Be Around People. You And I Require Sleep. They Require People.

Funny Graduation

Russia Has A Very Sophisticated, Advanced Attack On U.s. Businesses And U.s. Government And U.s. Institutions. And It's Not Like Donald Trump Is Going To Be Walking Away From This. He Will Be Spending A Lot Of Time On It, If He's Any Sort Of Normal President.

Donald Trump Is Sitting On The Control Deck Of The Starship Enterprise, And He Can Push A Lot Of Pretty Buttons, But Those Buttons Aren't Connected To Anything. And So Nothing Is Happening.

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.

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.

Students Are Too Busy Jumping Through The Next Hurdle In The Résumé Race To Figure Out What They Really Want. They Are Too Frantic Tasting Everything On The Smorgasbord To Have Life-altering Encounters. They Have A Terror Of Closing Off Options. They Have Been Inculcated With A Lust For Prestige And A Fear Of Doing Things That May Put Their Status At Risk.

I've Argued That Trump's Biggest Success In His First 100 Days Was To Keep The Russia Story At Bay, Toss Out Whatever It Takes To Push The Story Back, Including Those False Charges That Obama Had His Wires Tapped.

Whatever It Takes

We Still Are America Though. We're Still A Country That Is A Country Of Social Mobility. We're Still A Country Of Immigrants. We're Still A Country With Common Ancestors. And Reviving The Civics Of America And The Idea That We're Going To Be United, At Least Not Right Now, But In Some Common Future, And Talking In That Hopeful Way That Martin Luther King Did, That Abraham Lincoln Did, Seems To Me That's The Way.

Would [betsy Devos] Be My First Pick? No. Is She Someone Who Has Dedicated Her Life To Education Policy? Yes, Actually, She Has.

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.

When You're Running For President You Have To Take Some Risks And You've Got To Show People Something Fresh And You've Got To Stay Interesting.

The Moral Foundation Of The Society, The Way We Interact With Each Other Is More Fundamental Than The Supreme Court.

I Think Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Will Be Regarded More Failure Than Success.

How Can We Expect Young People To Be Rooted In Things Such As Character, Morality And Honesty? How Is One Supposed To Be At Once An Arrow Soaring Skyward And An Oak Planted Firmly In The Ground? The Meritocratic Culture Hones Strivers On Every Aspect Of Their Lives Save One - How To Cultivate Character.

When You Get A Big Crisis, Everyone Wants Somebody With Some Experience And Some Credibility.

When Your Institution Is Under Assault, You're Feeling Like The Weight Is On It And The History Might Be Flowing Away, Don't Turn Inward, Go Outward.

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.

Sometime Over The Past Generation We Became Less Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Immoral And More Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Unhealthy Or Unsafe. So Smoking Is Now A Worse Evil Than Six Of The Ten Commandments, And The Word Sinful Is Most Commonly Associated With Chocolate.

I Think Romney's Foreign Policy Is Sensible.

One Of The Things Capitalism Does Is, It Does Enhance And Exacerbate The Sin Of Pride, Making Yourself, The Material World The Center Of Your Universe, Instead Of God's Will.

I Have Come To Think We Have To Treat Donald Trump's Tweets Like Snapchat. It's Just Something That Is Going To Go Away. And It Flies Out Of Some Region Of His Brain And It Goes Out Into The Ether. And Usually It's On The Realm Of Media.

[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.

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.

If You Do Something Really Cognitively Demanding, Like Buying Furniture, It Turns Out Buying Furniture Is One Of The Most Difficult Things We Do. Go Into A Furniture Store And Look At A Sofa.

For The Democrats, They're Trying To Avoid Having The Sanders-clinton Debate Over And Over Again. But, To Some Degree, They're Sentenced To That Debate. Clinton Is Much More Embracing Of The Global Economy And The International World Order. Sanders And Warren Are Much Less So. And They Have Got To Figure Out Which Side The Party Is On, If They're Going To Have A Clear Message. I Think This Is Probably One You Probably Can't Straddle.

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.

When A President Speaks That Usually Means A Lot.

Learning Was A By-product Of Her Search For Pleasure

I Don't Blame The Democrats For Fighting. They Have Got A Very Energized Base. And There Is A Lot To Complain About A Lot Of These Nominees. But I Think, If You Are Actually Going To Turn Someone Down From A President's [donald Trump] Own Cabinet, It Better Be A Lot More Egregious Than The Cases We Have Seen.

Trending Author

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Janeane Garofalo

Category