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Self-actualization Is What Educated Existence Is All About. For Members Of The Educated Class, Life Is One Long Graduate School. When They Die, God Meets Them At The Gates Of Heaven, Totes Up How Many Fields Of Self-expression They Have Mastered, And Then Hands Them A Divine Diploma And Lets Them In.

-David Brooks

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Self-actualization Is What Educated

David Brooks

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Self-actualization Is What Educated Existence Is All About. For Members Of The Educated Class, Life Is One Long Graduate School. When They Die, God Meets Them At The Gates Of Heaven, Totes Up How Many Fields Of Self-expression They Have Mastered, And Then Hands Them A Divine Diploma And Lets Them In.

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The Zooming Wealth Of The Top 1 Percent Is A Problem, But It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The Tens Of Millions Of Americans Who Have Dropped Out Of High School Or College. It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The 40 Percent Of Children Who Are Born Out Of Wedlock. It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The Nation's Stagnant Human Capital, Its Stagnant Social Mobility And The Disorganized Social Fabric For The Bottom 50 Percent.

There Is A Virtue In Shamelessness.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I Do Think Economic And Social Anxiety Is The Number One Issue. And I'm Pretty Confident Hillary Clinton Will Be Really Riding That Train Pretty Hard.

On The [andrew] Puzder Point, I Do Agree There Has Been A Double Standard.

Double Standard

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Daily Activities

It’s Easy To See Why Politicians Would Be Drawn To The Populist Pose. First, It Makes Everything So Simple. The Economic Crisis Was Caused By A Complex Web Of Factors, Including Global Imbalances Caused By The Rise Of China. But With The Populist Narrative, You Can Just Blame Goldman Sachs.

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.

We Have Rapidly Increasing Technology, Which Is Making Life Very Good For People Who Are Good At Using Words, And Not So Good For People Who Are Not Good At Using Words.

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.

People Generally Don't Suffer High Rates Of Ptsd After Natural Disasters. Instead, People Suffer From Ptsd After Moral Atrocities. Soldiers Who've Endured The Depraved World Of Combat Experience Their Own Symptoms. Trauma Is An Expulsive Cataclysm Of The Soul.

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.

If You Know That Most Processing Is Below The Level Of Awareness, You Learn The Value Of Sleep. You're Brain Is Working On The Problem Anyway.

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.

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.

The More People Doubt Their Own Beliefs The More, Paradoxically, They Are Inclined To Proselytize In Favor Of Them.

People Tend To Marry People With Similar-width Noses, Eyes Similarly Apart, With Complementary Immune Systems.

Every White House I Have Covered Since Reagan, When I Got Here, Power Has Been More Concentrated In The White House Than The One Before.

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.

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.

The Rich Don't Exploit The Poor, They Just Out-compete Them.

The Reason The Betsy Devos Case Was The Centerpiece Case For The Democrats Wasn't About Her Weakness As A Knowledgeable Person On Education Policy.

Knowledgeable Person

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.

We Know The 65-point Policy Points, To The Extent That They Exist, But Is Hillary Clinton Willing To Be Vulnerable, Is She Willing To Be Funny, Is She Willing To Be Both Authoritative, But Also Real? And So Less What She Says Than The Emotional Tone She Sets. It Takes A Lot Of Confidence To Be A Vulnerable Speaker On This Stage. And Sometimes She Hasn't Always Projected The Confidence It Takes To Be In Some Ways Weak. But That's What I Think People Were Looking For, That Moment Of Human Connection.

Some People Think Humility Is Thinking Lowly Of Yourself. Some People Think It's Not Thinking About Yourself. But, To Me, The Best Definition Of Humility Is Radical Self-awareness From A Distance, Seeing Themselves From A Distance And Saying, What's My Problem?

Thinking About You

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

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 .

I Think As We Interpret Him And Frankly As The World Learns To Interpret Donald Trump, Are These Just Words That Are Enigmatic Things Floating On Air Or Are They Actually Shifts In Policy And Will They Change Moment By Moment, Day By Day Without Any Underlying Connection To The Actual Stuff Of Governance? I Don't Know.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Politics Really Is A Team Sport. You Really Have To Work The Whole System To Get Somewhere Down The Road.

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.

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.

There Are No Free And Democratic And Wealthy Countries In The World That Have Us Rate Of Gun Violence. We Have To Worry About Loners And Alienated People. We Have To Do Better On Mental Health.

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.

Obamacare Is Woven Into The Fabric Of Health Care. It's Very Hard To Just Rip It Out, As Donald Trump Sort Of Acknowledged With The Wall Street Journal.

People Want A Reality That Tells Them They're Right All Of The Time.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Think The Presidency Is A Bad Way To Measure The Effective Campaign Finance, Because In The Presidency, There Is So Much Publicity, There's So Much Money Floating Around.

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.

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.

Pain Now Is Better Than Pain Deferred.

Creativity Is Not A Solitary Process. It Happens Within Networks... When Talented People Get Together, When Idea Systems And Mentalities Merge.

We Live In A Culture That Encourages Us To Be Big About Ourselves, And I Think The Starting Point Of Trying To Build Inner Goodness Is To Be A Little Bit Smaller About Yourself.

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.

Those Cultural Wars, Sexual Revolution Issues Are Fading From The Scene, And The Coming Generation Has Basically Settled Them.

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

Self-actualization Is What Educated Existence Is All About. For Members Of The Educated Class, Life Is One Long Graduate School. When They Die, God Meets Them At The Gates Of Heaven, Totes Up How Many Fields Of Self-expression They Have Mastered, And Then Hands Them A Divine Diploma And Lets Them In.

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.

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 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.

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.

People Generally Overestimate How Distinct Their Lives Are, So The Commonalities Seemed To Them Like A Series Of Miracles.

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

Being Authentic

[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 You Thought Donald Trump Was Going To Be Swallowed Up By The Conventional Republican Party Or By Washington, You Were Wrong.

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.

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

The More Attention Hillary Clinton Gives To The Country, The Less People Seem To Like Her.

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.

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.

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

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.

[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.

Institutions Do All The Things That Are Supposed To Be Bad. They Impede Personal Exploration. They Enforce Conformity. But They Often Save Us From Our Weaknesses And Give Meaning To Life.

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.

It Is Especially Painful When Narcissists Suffer Memory Loss Because They Are Losing Parts Of The Person They Love Most.

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 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.

You Have Got To Have Two Things In Education Reform. You Have Got To Have Some Flexibility, So People Can Figure Out What To Do. But You Also Have To Have Accountable, Basically What The Common Core Standards Were, Some Sort Of Set Of National Standards, So We Can Measure.

If I Were Donald Trump, I Would Definitely Not Pick Mitt Romney Because It's Very Easy For Mitt Romney To Have Have A Separate Foreign Policy Operatus In The State Department That Would Run A Dissenting Foreign Policy From The White House Foreign Policy. There, I Think The Populist America-first Foreign Policy Of Donald Trump Does Run Against A Potential Rival.

I'm Not The Most Emotionally Attuned Guy In The World. My Wife Says That Me Writing About Emotion Is Like Gandhi Writing About Gluttony.

You Have A Country That Is 20 Percent Liberal, 40 Percent Conservative. You Have A Country Where Maybe 22 Percent Have Faith In Government. If You're A Liberal, It's Just Going To Be Tough. And You Should Just Expect That. And It's Tough For People On The Right, Too, Because They Don't Get What They Want Either If You're, Say, A Libertarian. So, You Have Got The Country Sort Of Against You. And, Nevertheless, You Have A President.

Woe To You Who Insults The Intelligence Community, If You're President.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Think We Are All Disgusted By The Way George W. Bush's Administration Has Allowed Honesty And Candor To Seep Into The Genteel World Of International Affairs.

I Think Charter Schools, Choice, And Frankly School Standards Need A Champion.

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

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.

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

I Think Globalization Has Been Really Good For America.

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.

The Government Is Supposed To Provide A Level Playing Field Where People Can Compete Fairly. It's Not Supposed To Cut Deals With One Company Or Another To Do So.

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 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.

I Think, From A Progressive Point Of View, To Have A Democratic Congress And A Democratic White House, And To Have Spent The Time On Obamacare, Which Had Real Benefits, 20 Million Insured, But Not On Inequality, Was A Major Cost To The Democratic Party, Costing Them Their Majorities, But Also A Bit Of A Cost To The Country, Because It Didn't Address The Fundamental Issues That Led To Donald Trump And That Led To A Lot Of Unhappiness, Just The Continued Widening Inequality.

Donald Trump Has A Pre-modern Monarchic Family Structure. His Business Is A Monarchy With Family Members All Around. His Administration Is A Monarchy With Family Members All Around.

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

People Who Don't Like Trump Really Don't Like Trump. And I Guess I'm Among Them.

Freedom Without Structure Is Its Own Slavery.

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

It's Always Dangerous To Overinterpret What Donald Trump Says At Any One Moment.

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.

Populists Love Rich People. They Just Hate Professionals.

My Suv, Assuming Hummer Comes Out With A Model For Those Who Find The Current Ones Too Cramped, Will Look Something Like The Louisiana Superdome On Wheels. It'll Guzzle So Much Gas As I Walk Out To My Driveway There Will Be Squads Of Saudi Princes Gaping And Applauding. It'll Come, When I Buy It, With Little Hondas And Mazdas Already Embedded In The Front Grillwork.

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.

Maybe You're Willing To Tolerate A Lot Of Bigotry From Donald Trump If You Say, Just Change Things, Just Change Things.

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.

Live Life As A Series Of Revelations

That Is The Job Of The Catholic Church, To Be A Balance To The Materialistic Drives Of Our Culture And Of Economy.

It's Hard For Parents Just To Measure Schools.

I Think The Democrats Are Right To Protest, But I Don't Think Jeff Sessions Is So Far Out Of The Range Of Normalcy That He Shouldn't Be Confirmed.

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.

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.

I Think The Twenty-first Century Happened, Basically. That This Century Started On 9/11. And Basically, It's Been A Century Of Counter Reaction To Globalization And The Meritocracy. And A Good Century For 72 Nations Have Gotten More Authoritarian. We've Had Brexit. We Have Le Pen Rising In France. We've Just Got A Lot Of These Types All Around The World. And The People Who Are Suffering From Globalization And The Meritocracy Are Saying, "no More. You Know, We Get A Voice Too."

Bragging About What A Good Deal You Got Is One Of The Many Great Art Forms That My People, The Jews, Have Introduced To American Culture.

Donald Trump Appalls Me. I Won't Be Shy About That.

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

English Language

I'm Not A Kicker And A Screamer.

The Roots Of Great Innovation Are Never Just In The Technology Itself. They Are Always In The Wider Historical Context. They Require New Ways Of Seeing. As Einstein Put It, 'the Significant Problems We Face Cannot Be Solved At The Same Level Of Thinking We Were At When We Created Them.'

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

Tim Kaine Has Been Obviously A Governor. He's Been A Senator. He's One Of The Smartest Rising Stars In The Democratic Party. He Is Very Plausible As Someone Who Could Sit In And Be President.

The Policies Of The Democratic Party Have Always Been In Cultural Consonance With The Culture Of The Working Class. And, Somehow, They Missed That.

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

Highly Educated Young People Are Tutored, Taught And Monitored In All Aspects Of Their Lives, Except The Most Important, Which Is Character Building. When It Comes To This, Most Universities Leave Them Alone.

Bibi Netanyahu, Froze The Settlements And Offered To Go Toward A Two-state Solution. The Palestinians Didn't Take Him Up On It. Historically, We Have Had A Series Of These Offers. And The Settlements Themselves Are Not The Keystone Here. It Seems To Me Myopic And Bizarre That At The Last Moment, The Barack Obama Administration Would Surrender The Whole Balanced Array Of Policies That Are Obstacles To Peace And Focus On The One That Is Most Detrimental To Israel.

Two Terrible Behaviors Don't Make A Good Behavior.

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.

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.

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.

Hillary Clinton Continues To Say Donald Trump's Unacceptable, He Doesn't Have The Character To Be President. He Is Saying - Continues Saying She Needs To Be In Prison.

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.

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.

I've Come To Think That Flourishing Consists Of Putting Yourself In Situations In Which You Lose Self-consciousness And Become Fused With Other People, Experiences, Or Tasks.

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?

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

I Do Think Hillary Clinton Should Have Pivoted And Say, I Am Change, I Am Change, Because People Do Want Some Change.

The Fact That There Could Be An Isis West Bank, The Fact That The Palestinian Government In Gaza Doesn't Even Acknowledge Israel's Right To Exist, The Fact Of Constant Terror, Delegitimization Campaigns In The Palestinian Schools, These Are All Much Bigger Facts. And For The Barack Obama Administration To Focus On This One Fact, Almost, Not To The Expense, But To Diminish Some Of The Others Which Are Much More Important, Is To Cast All The Blame On Israel And To Take The U.n. Policy Toward Israel, Which Has Been Longstanding, And Sort Of Surrender To It.

The North Korean Regime Is Extremely Fiery, Extremely Insecure, Sometimes Hysterical. And When You're Around Somebody Who's Screaming And Unstable, The Last Thing You Want To Do Is Add To The Instability With Your Own Unstable, Hysterical Rhetoric.

The Prevailing View Is That Geniuses Are Largely Built, Not Born.

No Matter Where You Are On Politics, I Think It Is Wonderful To See Candidates Funding Campaigns Not By Talking To A Very Small Number Of Very Rich People, But By Reaching Out To A Very Large Number Of Citizens.

Hillary Clinton Is Still - She's Such A Private Person.

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

Donald Trump Is Sort Of An Orwellian Figure, An Authoritarian Figure Who Is Twisting Words In An Orwellian Manner, "1984," To Exercise Power And Control People's Minds, Or Is He A 5-year-old Who Has An Ego That Needs To Be Fed, And The Universe Has To Warp Around His Ego Needs So He Can Feel Good About Himself, And Everybody Has To Produce Photos To Make The Monarch Feel Like He's Made Of Gold.

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.

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

If You're Running A Successful Administration, Then You're Loyal To People Who Are Basically Good Who Make A Mistake. And That Seems To Be Essential For Any Organization. And It Should Be Essential If This Were A Normal Administration, Rather Than A Fiefdom, Where Everybody Simply Tries To Give Donald Trump A Good Headline Every Day.

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.

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

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

As For Multimillionaires [in Donald Trump's Administration], A Lot Of Us Hope To Be A Multimillionaire Some Day. Again, Spotty Records, But It Seems To Be Not Without The Range.

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 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.

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

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'm Not Sure [donald] Trump Has Had That Distinction Between Private And Public Life In His Head. And So, I Think There's Likely To Be An Erosion Of Just That Standard, That Different Standard, Consciousness, And I Think It's Likely We'll See What We Haven't Seen In The Last Eight Years And Even The Last 12 Or 16 Of Private Enrichment In Office And Scandals Where People Have To Resign And Things Like That, Because Just Once The Standards Go, Behavior Tends To Go.

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.

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.

Empathy Makes You More Aware Of Other People's Suffering, But It's Not Clear It Actually Motivates You To Take Moral Action Or Prevents You From Taking Immoral Action.

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

If You Just Rely On One Model, You Tend To Amputate Reality To Make It Fit Your Model.

Putin Has Been - And With A Lot Of The Groups, The Conservative Groups, The More Extreme Conservative Groups That Underlie Trump, He's A Bit Of A Hero Because He Speaks For Traditional Values, He's Against The Global Institutions.

We're No Longer Living In Tammany Hall America.

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 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.

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.

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

Emotion Is The Foundation Of Reason.

I'm Of Course Nostalgic For Barack Obama All Of A Sudden.

The Idea That Russia Felt Emboldened And Apparently Fearless To Go Into Our Election And Manipulate Our Own Election Process, Whether Successfully Or Not, Is A Sign That They Are Outside The Norms Of Normal Society.

Election Process

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

There Certainly Is A Pattern Of Administrations That Have Good Transitions, George W. Bush To Barack Obama, And Administrations That Have Really Bad Transitions, I Would Say Dwight Eisenhower To John F. Kennedy. I Would Say This Is Beginning To Look Like A Bad Transition, From Barack Obama To Donald Trump As They Begin To Argue Even At The Presidential Level, Which Is More Or Less Unprecedented.

Your Dvd Collection Is Organized, And So Is Your Walk-in Closet. Your Car Is Clean And Vacuumed, Your Frequently Dialed Numbers Are Programmed Into Your Cordless Phone, Your Telephone Plan Is Suited To Your Needs, And Your Various Gizmos Interact Without Conflict. Your Spouse Is Athletic, Your Kids Are Bright, Your Job Is Rewarding, Your Promotions Are Inevitable, Everywhere You Need To Be Comes With Its Own Accessible Parking. You Look Great In Casual Slacks.

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

The Idea That When You Correct A Fact, You Erase That Fact From People's Memories Is The Reverse Of The Truth. When You Correct A Fact, What You Do Is You Further Lodge That Fact Into People's Minds, And They Remember The Error.

We Don't Have The Choice To Control Our Emotions, But We Do Have The Power To Educate Our Emotions. And We Do That Through Literature And Through Art And Music To Give Ourselves A Repertoire Of Emotional Experiences.

The Corruption Will Come Back To Haunt The Trump Administration. But Mostly, It'll Come Back To Haunt The American Economy, As Companies Decide They Can Make Money By Rent-seeking, By Getting Money From Government Rather Than Earning It The Old-fashioned Way.

The Things That Make Them Similar - Their Machismo, Their Expansionary Braggadocio - Is Going To Turn Them I Think Into Bitter And Dangerous Enemies. We Will Look Back On This Moment Where We Thought Vladimir Putin And Donald Trump Were Sort Of Close As A Moment Of Bitter Irony, When They Get Into A Schoolyard Display Against Each Other, Amping Up Each Other's Worst Tendencies And Putting The Two Countries In Some Sort Of Scary Position.

Parties That Are Majority Parties Are Incoherent Parties.

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."

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

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.

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