David Brooks

I__e 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. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you__e playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God__ love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I__e come to think that happiness isn__ really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.

Human beings are primarily defined by what we desire, not what we know.

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.

When most people think about the future, they dream up ways that they might live happier lives. But notice this phenomenon. When people remember the crucial events that formed them, they don't usually talk about happiness. It is usually the ordeals that seem most significant. Most people shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering.

In 1950, the [Gallup organization] asked high school kids, are you a very important person? Then 12 percent said yes. Asked again in 2005, 80 percent said, yes, I'm a very important person.

Those born in the poorest quarter of American society have an 8% chance of earning a college degree. Those born in the wealthiest quarter of American society have a 75% chance of earning a college degree.

The shock of public hostility served as a stimulant. It made them acutely conscious of how society functioned.

Humanities are the instructors of enchantment.

He read vividly.

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

If there is one thing developmental psychologists have learned over the years, it is that parents don__ have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed. They don__ have to be supremely gifted teachers. Most of the stuff parents do with flashcards and special drills and tutorials to hone their kids into perfect achievement machines don__ have any effect at all. Instead, parents just have to be good enough. They have to provide their kids with stable and predictable rhythms. They need to be able to fall in tune with their kids_ needs, combining warmth and discipline. They need to establish the secure emotional bonds that kids can fall back upon in the face of stress. They need to be there to provide living examples of how to cope with the problems of the world so that their children can develop unconscious models in their heads.

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

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

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.

They finally achieve a sort of outward-facing union.

The imagination simplifies our endless desires and causes us to fantasize that they can be fulfilled.

...Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want. It__ messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than they want. Disappointment is normal.But that__ sort of the beauty of politics, too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it__ better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way....

Moderation is based on the idea that things do not fit neatly together. Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but incompatible traits.