David Brooks Quotes

Young Arab men are not going to walk away from extremism because they can suddenly afford a Slurpee. They will walk away when they can devote themselves to a some call to serve a cause that connects nationalism to dignity and democracy and transcends a lifetime.

You can't counter a heroic impulse with a mundane and bourgeois response. You can counter it only with a more compelling heroic vision.

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.

In childhood, the inexplicableness of the world is still vivid and fresh, and sometimes hits with terrifying force.

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.

The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015

Learning was a by-product of her search for pleasure

Friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends.

Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

People tend to want to live up to their friends’ high regard.

Her genius derives from the fact that she was capable of the deepest feeling but also of the most discerning and disciplined thought.

Women, in general, are less visually aroused than men, a trait that has nearly cut the market for pornography in half.

As Paul Tillich put it, suffering introduces you to yourself and reminds you that you are not the person you thought you were.