David Brooks Quotes

In many cases, companies use the crisis moments to pivot to do better. We like to be part of that.

Whatever new threats and challenges may emerge, our nation will be able to face them squarely, deal with them, and yet allow our people to continue to live free and unafraid. The decisions you make, the courage and creativity you bring to your responsibilities, will determine America's future. Liberty and our way of life are fragile gifts - their care is in your hands. We thank you for stepping forward to shoulder that immense responsibility. Your country is grateful, and proud of each of you.

When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.

Sometimes accidents happen in life from which we have need of a little madness to extricate ourselves successfully

I think that in great crises you need to have deep rooted convictions and I have a feeling from the kind of campaigns that I have watched Mr. Nixon in in the past that his convictions are not very strong.

Here's my philosophy in life: If there's a fire, you put it out. If there's a flood, you fill sandbags and you build a dike. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work.

. . . it is worth discussing radical changes, not in the expectation that they will be adopted promptly but for two other reasons. One is to construct an ideal goal, so that incremental changes can be judged by whether they move the institutional structure toward or away from that ideal. The other reason is very different. It is so that if a crisis requiring or facilitating radical change does arise, alternatives will be available that have been carefully developed and fully explored.

The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through.

I have more appreciation for why the Bible avoids fuzzy psychologisms and says simply to the stealer, "Steal no more," and to the tempted, "Flee temptation." The Bible challenges us to look upward, not inward, for counsel at moments of crisis.

Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

Action can give us the feeling of being useful, but only words can give us a sense of weight and purpose.

Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.

I lived through crises. September 11 is obviously the biggest one that I've lived through.

... any citizen should be willing to give all that he has to give his country in work or sacrifice in times of crisis.

Mentally I must be lazy, like a little kid, but I always seem to do well when there's a tough situation.

Never underestimate the power of a loosely knit group working for a good cause. All of us who work for peace together, all of us who pray for peace together, are a small minority, but a powerful spiritual fellowship. Our power is beyond our numbers.

The BP president said yesterday that the company would survive. That's like someone running over your dog and saying, 'Don't worry, my car is fine.'

When your institution is under threat, you feel you have a lot of hostility, you feel things are slipping away, you have got internal problems, there's a tendency to turn inward and to focus on yourselves.

At the worst possible moment, the most painful, darkest moment when you can't take it anymore and you are afraid, that is when a feeling of peace and comfort will come over you, and it's like nothing you've ever felt.

It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body... On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.

I don't think Spain will need any kind of external support.

I am not taking away the historical legacy, but it should not become a burden.

How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!

The outpouring of support from health professionals who want to volunteer for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts has been tremendous.

There is something in these moments of crisis that is really extraordinary about humanity and human beings' resilience and the way in which everyone naturally comes together. I think you see the best in people in those moments for better or for worse and you find your best self.