David Brooks Quotes

For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion - in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence. We are not robots...but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgement.

Emotional Literacy means being able to recognise what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes another dimension to draw upon when making decisions or encountering situations. Emotional expression by contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it isn't possible to think. These two things are often confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the idea of the validity of feelings.

Of course, I get angry. Of course, I get sad. I have a full range of emotions. I also have a whole smorgasbord of ways of dealing with my feelings. That is what we should give children. Give them ... ways to express their rage without hurting themselves or somebody else. That's what the world needs.

We have the choice to choose how we're going to educate our emotions.

We don't teach kids how to feel, we don't give them the words to go by.

I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.

The basic premise that children must learn about emotions is that all feelings are okay to have; however, only some reactions are okay.

We accept there's an emotional aspect to life. But we're not very developed in our ways of understanding it.

Knowledge of the means to express our emotion is essential- and is acquired only after a very long experience.

Don’t panic, I thought. But already my breathing was faster, shallower. “You mean you can feel happy or sad or—” “Desire.” A barely-there smile.

It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn’t come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren’t ready, when you were just innocently flossing your teeth, for example, or eating a bowl of cereal.

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.

You'll have to learn to control your emotions. They're new, like achild's now, bursting with passion. Never let them fade, or part of you will die. But they cal also destroy you. Hold them dear, but don't let them take hold of you.

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brain works so well that our reasoning can work at all.

...no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.

To shut yourself from history is to shut yourself off from say music or painting or the theatre, literature for the rest of your life. It would be to cheat yourself of the pleasures of life.

The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education - or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments - is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves.

Humans: such a brilliant model of emotional self-awareness.

A modern teacher educates children to value their emotions.

I do think music and the arts are imperative for our kids for their creative learning and their emotional education, which breeds better adults. I'm doing what I can to try and pick up the slack and I applaud anyone who tries to give back to their community.

The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.

When you respond to an unreasonable person by getting emotional, you give them victory. How do you manage unreasonable people? You dismiss them. Like shadows

If you want to feel a certain way, feel it now.

When you allow a person's words to upset you, you're giving away your power.

When I've heard a piece of music or seen a painting that moves me, it gives me something.