Abilene had gone from boomtown to Bible Belt, from whorehouses to schoolmarms, without any of the intervening phases.

— David Brooks

Across the centuries the moral systems from medical chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment. But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today's world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act than the choice of an erotic partner. This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other's commitment. Today there are fewer norms that guide that way. Today's technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.

— David Brooks

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.

— David Brooks

(A middle-class child's) parents didn't just give him money. They passed down habits, knowledge, and cognitive traits.

— David Brooks

Angela Duckworth has shown how important grit and perseverance are to lifetime outcomes. College students who report that they finish whatever they begin have higher grades than their peers, even ones with higher SATs.

— David Brooks

A person who is interrupted while performing a task takes 50% more time to complete it and make 50% more errors.

— David Brooks

Apparently, we have become such a hyper-individualized culture that it is impossible to develop an argument based on how individual cases fit into the fabric of the common good.

— David Brooks

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

— David Brooks

College is about exposing students to many things and creating an aphrodisiac atmosphere so that they might fall in lifelong love with a few.

— David Brooks

Dan P. McAdams argues that children develop a narrative tone which influences their stories for the rest of their lives. Children gradually adopt an enduring assumption that everything will turn out well, or badly, depending on their childhood.

— David Brooks