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.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Wire
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Kind
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.Collection: Party
Trade has suddenly become massively unpopular. I think that's massively unjust. I think free trade has been wonderful for America on balance.Collection: Thinking
I think actually in any party it's a sign of general health to have different views, and especially on the subject of trade.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Roots
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.Collection: Honesty
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.Collection: Class
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.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Squad
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.Collection: Education
I think Donald Trump is going to find it very hard to do the kind of massive change he wants.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Blessed
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.Collection: Two
The school asks a person who has achieved a certain level of career success to give you a speech telling you that career success is not important.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Sleep
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Love Is
I think charter schools, choice, and frankly school standards need a champion.Collection: School
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?Collection: Summer
The core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it's the [Bush] haters themselves.Collection: White
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.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Winning
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.Collection: Race
It's hard for parents just to measure schools.Collection: School
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.Collection: Looks
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.Collection: Things In Life
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?Collection: Distance
I wasn't born with a tie or with Mark Shields stapled to my left hip. I have another life.Collection: Ties
If you grow up in a home where actions don't lead to predictable consequences, you don't develop strategies to control your impulses.Collection: Growing Up
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: New York
I want to limit the effects of the power of donors, no question about it.Collection: Want
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Thinking
The brain writes the autobiography of our species at the conscious level.Collection: Writing
There is the English language and then there's the Trump language.Collection: Language
If we got rid of everybody in Washington who sold access for donations, then the town would be empty. But it's unseemly.Collection: Would Be
I think Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana was a case of that, who was an outstanding administrator.Collection: Thinking
[Mitch Daniels] was not a bad governor. He could be playful, but - or communicator.I'm just saying it will - I think will be - every candidate comes into the White House, assuming if [Hillary Clinton] wins, or if she does win, with strengths and weaknesses. This will be a weakness, because this was such an easy moment to show some heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: People