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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.

-David Brooks

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Stairway To Wisdom”) David

David Brooks

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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.

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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.

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.

My Colleague Ross Douthat Wrote That Any Time You Give Donald Trump The Benefit Of The Doubt, He Always Lets You Down.

Benefit Of The Doubt

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.

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

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

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

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

There Is A Virtue In Shamelessness.

Fundamentalism Is Still On The March.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Freedom Without Structure Is Its Own Slavery.

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.

I'm Not A Kicker And A Screamer.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

I Learned I'm Not A Science Writer. I'm Not Very Good At Describing How Something Is Happening. I Try To Describe "so What?"

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

When A President Speaks That Usually Means A Lot.

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.

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.

I Wasn't Born With A Tie Or With Mark Shields Stapled To My Left Hip. I Have Another Life.

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?

It's Very Hard To Find An Evangelical Person Under 45, Let Alone On Some Of The Christian College Campuses, Who Has Any Tolerance For Donald Trump.

Plunder Is Morally Wrong. It Ruins Your Credibility.

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

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

Liberals Lost Touch With Working-class Americans Because They Never Had To Have A Conversation About Values With Those Voters; They Could Just Rely On The Courts To Impose Their Views.

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.'

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two Terrible Behaviors Don't Make A Good Behavior.

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

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.

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.

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.

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'm A Pundit. I'm, Like, Paid To Be A Narcissistic Blowhard And Be In Front Of The Camera.

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 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 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.

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.

On The Larger Issue Of The Travel Ban, Our Friend Charles Krauthammer Of The Washington Post I Think Put It Pretty Well. I'm Not Sure It's Illegal, But It's Extremely Stupid.

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.

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.

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

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.

We Actually Have To Have A Government. We Have To Have People Confirmed And Put Into Office.

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.

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.

Our System Is Not Only Based On Rules, But A Series Of Self-restraints That We Won't Be As Barbaric As We Could Be In Competing For Power Because We Know If We're All Barbaric As We Could Be, The Whole Country And The Whole Society Falls Apart.

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.

Donald Trump Understands Sense Of Belonging. And A Lot Of People Think Globalization, Any Time You Make Any Particularity, You're Sort Of Offending Some Other Group. And A Lot Of People In This Country Think They Belong To America Anymore, And He At Least Appeals To Some Sense Of Belonging. I Like The Idea That We Belong To Western Traditions, So I'm Glad He Appeals To That Sort Of Thing.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I, Personally, Think Trump Improved Pretty Dramatically And Certainly Changed Pretty Dramatically Over The Last Hundred Days. He's Less Of The Populist. He's More Of The Corporatist. He's Less Incompetent. He's Trying To At Least Turn Toward People Who Can Put A Decision-making Process. And He's Trying To Adjust To The Job. And So Whatever One Thinks Of Him, He Is Certainly A Learning Creature.

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.

Things That Change History Tend To Be Organized.

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.

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

It’s Not That Egypt Doesn’t Have A Recipe For A Democratic Transition. It Seems To Lack Even The Basic Mental Ingredients.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Populists Love Rich People. They Just Hate Professionals.

The Republican Party Has Become An Ethnic Nationalist Party.

Republican Party

Emotion Is The Foundation Of Reason.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Double Standard

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

[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 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.

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

Almost Every Successful Person Begins With Two Beliefs: The Future Can Be Better Than The Present, And I Have The Power To Make It So.

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.

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?

I Do Think Creating An Open Free-trade Economy But With Strong Social Support Is The Way To Go.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Pain Now Is Better Than Pain Deferred.

It's Rare In An Administration For A Secretary Of State And A Secretary Of Defense To Get Along Really Well.

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.

The Brain Is Not The Mind. It Is Probably Impossible To Look At A Map Of Brain Activity And Predict Or Even Understand The Emotions, Reactions, Hopes And Desires Of The Mind.

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

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.

Learning Was A By-product Of Her Search For Pleasure

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

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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.

People Have Been Raised In A Morality That Says, "if It Feels All Right For You, It's Probably Ok."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

I Think Globalization Has Been Really Good For America.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It's The Rising Tide Of Enmity In The Country, Donald Trump Attacking Judges, Donald Trump Attacking John Mccain, Senator [richard] Blumenthal, The Town Halls, The Riots In Berkeley. You Have Got The Incivility On The Floor Of The United States Senate. You Have Got Just A Rising Tide, Every Single Story.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

Nonetheless, So Whether It's Unconstitutional Or Not [for Judges To Overruling Presidents], I Leave To Others.

Unconstitutional

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

As A Director, I Like Trying To Unlock The Subtext Of The Scene And Try To Put The Camera In A Place That Helps That.

I Want To Try To Make Big Films That Hopefully Connect With People.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

People Who Give Money In Large Amount In Politics Are Basically Not Altruistic. They Have Some Issue. They Have Some Interest. It May Be World Peace. It May Be Preserving Carried Interest. But It's Not Altruistic.

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.

People Ask, Quite Legitimately, Why [betsy] Devos And Why Not A Lot Of The Others? But It's Because It Has To Do With The Special Interest Groups That Run A Lot Of Washington.

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.

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.

We Live In A Culture Of A Big Me. We're Encouraged - We Raise Our Kids To Think How Great They Are, Where We Have To Market Ourselves To Get Through Life. We're In Social Media, Where We Broadcast Highlight - Highlight Reels Of Our Own Lives On Facebook.

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.

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.

You Have Got To Be Loyal To People Beneath You.

If It's All Win-loss, Then You Do Whatever You Can To Win And To Make Money And To Beat The Deal.

[betsy Devos] Does Care About Charter Schools, Which Are Public Schools. She Does Care About Choice, Which Is A Perfectly Legitimate Thing To Care About. It's Because It's The One Issue Where The Democratic Donor Base Was Really Energized, Which Was The Teacher Unions.

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Charles Horton Cooley

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