YouSaid · the spoken record

David Brooks

lines on the record: 108
first: 2019-05-20
most recent: 2019-05-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Although all those things may be fun. And then I say in the book, everyone tells you to live for a cause larger than themselves, but nobody tells you how. And so doing the exact detail work of how is that hard part?”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's someone that's planted, it's someone who's planted themselves down in a place, in a vocation, a calling with their friends and their family, and they're dependent. So I become suspicious of an independent life. We say we all want to be free. I was free. Freedom stinks. You don't want to be free. You want political freedom, that's good. Economic freedom, okay? Social freedom, where you're just free, floating and untattached, keeping your options open. That's not a good life, in my view. So the good life is the one where you look at that person and you say, I know what their commitments are. It radiates out from them. They love this organization. They love teaching. They love this family. They are in this neighborhood and they're making this neighborhood work.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I hope I sometimes say our conversation is over politicized and undermoralized. We don't talk about things like we've been talking about for the last hour enough. We talk too much about the polls. And so I try to be another voice as you are in the public conversation talking about the things that really matter. How do you do forgiveness? How do you go through life with a feeling of gratitude? And so that's one of my purposes. I hope to love my family and the people around me. And then I hope to help create a movement for these weavers who I think are the force that's really going to shape society.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, you have to go through the valley. And what the rabbi said was he pointed out a truth, and I think we all understand that truth. And when we all understand the truth, we can change our behavior to reflect the truth. And so I think we've had a rough few years, and a lot of people are lying dead from mass shootings and other things. And we have a lot of things around us to help us.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is social fragmentation, social isolation. We are just coming apart as a society and for college kids, that's the one they're going to have to grapple with, how to take a beautifully diverse society and make it a coherent society where we really know each other, we listen to each other, we trust each other. That's a lifetime challenge for a young generation.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it might be ego, but I think circumstances change. So in the 1980s, we had a stagnant economy, and I really did not like the Soviet Union. I felt that was an evil empire, really. And so I was for the free market. But now I see the free market, and it's increasingly not working for a lot of people. And so I've lost some of my free market views, and I'm much more for using government to give people a leg up. And so that's been a big shift, but mostly my life is It's like deepening. It's like somebody names something for you and you say, oh, that's what I believe. But you didn't know you believed until somebody else named it. For you. And sometimes life is like trying on dresses or suits in the mall. You try on a lot of dresses, try on a lot of suits, and finally, oh yeah, this one is the one that fits.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess I'm going to get a little political. I used to be a socialist, and then I became a free market conservative, and now I'm neither. And so my political views have evolved much more than. Anything else. And we should be open”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they were chasing each other across the yard, running after this ball. They were tumbling after each other and they were laughing and giggling. And for some reason, my lawn looked great. I don't know how that happened. And I sat in the car with a windshield. They just saw this picture of family happiness. And as I say, it was one of those moments where the reality spilled outside its boundaries. I just felt gratitude for happiness that I couldn't possibly deserve or live up to. And that's what grace is. I mean, it's like, wow.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I knew Grace before I knew God weirdly, was to say I felt smiled upon before I believed there was any deity. And the story, one story I tell is I was coming home from a TV show I do called The News Hour on PBS and I pulled it on my driveway and the driveway wrapped around the side of the house and the kids were like 12, 9 and 4.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to know God really. I mean, God is weird. The scientists say we live in a multi-universe, like there are millions of universes. Yeah. And they're all parallel with each other, and there's another one where you and I are also sitting in that other one. That's a weird idea, but God is weirder than that. Like the idea that something existed before time and breathed life into the world and embodies a moral law, that's weird. And so I would love to just Get some deeper understanding, some deeper contact with that. And I think it would be, I see people who've got what they call the full disease. And those people radiate joy, the one who really have some where God is just integrated into them.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That it'll bite you in the rear in the end. That sooner or later the soul will come out of wherever that soul hides and it'll sit right there in front of you and it'll say what's your justification here? What have you served? Is it good or ill? We're all caught in these moral dramas and we can be known to that when we're busy, but eventually you're going to get caught and you have to have an answer to that question. What have you done? Why have you been called? What have you served?”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a competition between partial truths, so it's between like achievement and equality, between security and freedom. And usually in the big arguments between the individual and the collective. Usually you're just trying to negotiate, get the right balance one by one. And so you're just trying to, like the shift will sometimes lean that way, so you lean that way. The ship sometimes lean that way, so you lean that way. You're just trying to get balance”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a challenge. I think competition, I think we can find a balance. Life is a balance between opposites. Politics is a competition between partial truths. And so I'm not against being competitive. I still want to be good at my job. So I live that life, but I want to have another complete.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first, well, the one thing I would offer was A, there were more unified than we are dissimilar, but B, don't do it alone. I think a lot of leaders that I meet, they think I'm going to be president or prime minister alone. And so they heard themselves, they isolate themselves. I often ask people in government, what's the thing you learned that you didn't know beforehand? And one president told me there's a lot more passive aggressive behavior than I thought. I'd give an order and nothing happens. But one answer I got was, I used to think this job was 75% personality in relationships, and now I realize it's 95% personality in relationships. So you got to get out of your leadership ice bubble and really throw yourself on people.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But now she helps women who suffered from violence. She runs a free pharmacy. She teaches in school. And she leads a life of selflessness. And people like that are pretty awesome.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Often in nature, often around other people. I mention these weavers all the time. I was with a woman who had the worst thing that happened to her could happen. She lost her husband killed her kids and himself. And she lives a life of service. And she says, I'm angry a lot of the time. Whatever you tried to do to me.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, yeah. Or even sometimes you got to be beaten up before you're tender enough to feel. And I think life had to beat me up a little.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, as I said, it was from that loneliness period. And it wasn't just one thing I gained. I gained a whole difference, a different viewpoint.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, well, I guess that would be my marriage. It seemed impossible. And so we cast it out. It never seemed possible. But once we had discovered years later that we do love each other, Then this is what it is. This is real love.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was that 2013 experience It was the moment when I just said, I'm letting go here. We'll see what happens. I wasn't able to talk like I couldn't have had this conversation without six years of.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I call it God. And I see it as a pattern of way of living that is celestial grandeur that in the stories that have been passed down to us, there are lessons in how to copy your life, who to live after, and we can experience grace through those stories.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't say I've completely overcome it, but my fear was if I was honest about myself, people wouldn't love me. And so I had to hide everything.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do. We do. If Abraham Lincoln were around, he was a good one, but there are a lot of great leaders in our history. We need someone who is not just tweeting about himself all the time.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We need institutional change too, but institutional change can't happen until we have trusting bonds between us and we can work together for it. And so if we're distrusting each other. Then we can't do the institutional change we need”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, every day. Every day he has an instinct for where our wounds are and he pokes at them and he rips us. And so that's hard, but I still think he's not as powerful as we are.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you take in all the. None of us are perfect. We all stereotype. We all do things that aren't fair or right to other people. We don't always take the time to really deeply understand others. But it is the good news, it's up to us, that it's our choices that create the social fabric. It's people up above in politics doch shape that the president can really rip a social fabric. But we can all weave the little fabric around us and create the context for us to lead the best.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. It's funny when I was back in my smoldering period, I had all these smoldering spiritual experiences. Now I'm blissfully happy. And I not only have a marriage, I really got a project that I'm doing that I believe in. The book is something that was very meaningful for me to write, so it was a project that I really believed in. And life is about intensity, and I have a lot of intense commitments and intense loves. And so I say good written to all those smoldering spiritual breakthroughs. I'd rather be blissfully joyful”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the rest of your life is a 50 year conversation. You don't want to be one of those people at the diner who just don't talk to each other. So you got to have purity of conversation with, and we could be on the time.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the way, I mean, I worry about it so much because I'll die probably a lot before her. But the one bit of advice that was given to me on that, first I love all her friends. I think she loves my friends. So it hasn't been a problem that way. But center your relationship in the younger person's friend group. Don't let the older person's friend group be the friend group for the relationship. So, if you center on the younger persons, then it'll just be balanced.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to see what this is. But she said, No, I'm going to do the right thing. And she had a lot of clergy and a lot of friends, counselor, counseling her on how to behave. And so to me, this was a moment of moral rectitude for her, frankly. This was a moment where I was not strong, but she was strong. And so I'm proud of her for that moment. And then we went off and led our lives. She moved to Houston. I thought we'd never see her. And then I moved my social life to New York and had a lot of great friendships there and had a relationship. And then life had its twists and turns. Three years later, still she's sort of on my mind Happened. And then what it seemed impossible began to seem inevitable. And my love for her is as strong as can be. And I think her love for me is very strong. The age gap is something that has to be faced.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we were working as research and author. And then what happened sort of toward the end of 2013, I was in a vulnerable place in life, and she was an amazing person. And I started developing feelings for her. And maybe she started developing feelings for me. And we knew there was this UJ's gap. We knew the situation we were in. So what did she do? She cut off communications between us because she said this can't happen. And she moved away to Houston. And so she went away for three years and we were out of communication for all that time because she said, I'm going to do this if it's going to happen. I'm going to do this right. And so to me, that's a very hard decision to make And she did the right thing at that moment. I was not happy about it”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, of course, people gossip and they don't know what actually happened. It was we just exchanged memos about my last book. And then my marriage was ending and then she was just exchanging memos. I was living alone in the apartment. I was going through a bad period. She really had no view into my other life.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Knowing when to go in and when to hang back Because you can't just do that. But as I say, that's wisdom. That's where wisdom lies.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Burnout and self-care. And this is for nurses, for teachers, for a lot of people who are just interacting with a lot of people.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really want to get an understanding who you are, and seeing deeply in another person, these are all skills, these are not just something automatic. Automatically we judge on the surface.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like And you know what else she shares this with you? People who are really relational know how to ask good questions because they actually care about the other person. They see deeply into it. I have a friend named Pete, and when I was going in the dumpster, we'd have these late night phone calls, and he would ask me questions to give me advice. And he'd ask me like five or six, and I would think, oh, here, he's going to start giving me advice. But then he would ask me another five or six. And so that's what a good listener is. They ask that other five or six questions.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's this process of going to the valley, get broken open, let somebody reach you up, and then once you're ready for the second climb, you just find things to commit to. And the people I've seen, I've been around people who are joyous recently. Once a month, I find somebody just radiates joy. I mean, the famous person I was with recently for this Weave project, I was around Yovioma, the Chella.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think you get out of your ego. The ego is like, how am I doing? How am I doing? What do people think of me? And believe me, I certainly have not left that behind. But you sort of focus, well, what does my heart want? My heart wants to fuse with another. How am I doing in that department? And what does the soul want? My soul wants to serve some good. How am I doing in that department? So just paying more attention down here. And it seems simple, but it's hard.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so this is a material universe, just that. I don't think that explains that. I think we at moments, key moments in our lives, get a sense of transcendence, get a sense there's something magical and enchanted about the world. And for me, faith isn't like God telling me every day what to do. I don't hear his voice that often, but I feel we live in a created world and that there is some sense of purpose and meaning to our life. And human beings are amazing creatures. Penguins are very loyal to each other, but our capacity to love for each other is, as my friend said, more than evolution required. Glove is like”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The categories I had didn't explain life as I experienced it. Like you have moments of joy, moments where magic is happening. I quote this passage in there, this A.D. Smith passage. She's dancing in a nightclub and tribe qual quest comes on. Some strange guy reaches out her hand. She says the top of our heads flew away. We just danced and danced. We gave ourself up to joy. And that's magic.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We all succumb to temptation. But I make this distinction between happiness and joy. And happiness is when the self expanse you move toward your goals, you achieve a success. And joy is when you transcend the self where a mother and daughter are just so in love with each other you can't tell where one ends and one begins. When somebody's out in nature, when somebody's so lost in their work, they've lost all consciousness. And my rule is happiness is great. I'm all for happiness, success, and winning the Super Bowl. Joy is better. If you aim your life toward joy, you'll end up in the right spot.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We all love a lot of things. I bet we all have a pretty similar view of what's a higher desire. So, for example, if a friend tells you a secret and you blab at a dinner party, you've put your desire for popularity above your love of friendship. And we all know that friendship's a better love than popularity. If you lie for money, you've put your love of money above your love of honesty. And we all have an instinct. Honesty is a better desire. So raising your desire up to the things that really are worth desiring.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think one of the things I noticed, I grew up in Greenwich Village in that period, so I was sort of surrounded by hippies. There was actually a joyfulness to them that sometimes I don't find in our movements. And joy is another big word, I think, for both of us.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Frankly. But we solve our problems, we shift over. Cultures work for a little while. They stop working. We chop it up. And those moments when we chop it up are bumpy. We're in one of those moments now. 1968 was such a moment. And you can get hopeless because everything seems to be flying to pieces. But then we pivot, we figure it out. And the way I think culture changes is a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us follow them. And I think where there are people around us, we can see in our own lives who found that better way to live. And if we all follow them, we'd create change.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, well, I'm not against the First Mountain. I just want to step both. But you got to have the skills that you build on the first mountain. You got to have the platforms.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some people think about technology ships history or politics. I think culture and we shape history from the background up. And so that's why I'm optimistic, by the way. Yeah, I am very because we never underestimate human ingenuity. When we went from the 50s to the 60s, we just shifted our culture and we had a collective problem.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But how can you make a life commitment if you can't focus your attention for 30 seconds? And that's my problem. So it's always like, oh, I'm reading two pages. I'll go check. Maybe I got an email. And that has become a real disease and a real way to... Not stay where you need to stay over periods. And you can't control when your mind is going to go somewhere. One thing I do is I'm a walker, so I find long walks are just very like, and then you're not thinking of anything for most of the walk. Then suddenly later you go, Oh, that's unthought about my truth about my life or a truth about somebody else's life.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one thing is we can do put some rules around the phones. I think about As to how we communicate, we're talking about the heart and soul. How much heart and soul communication happens through a screen, through the phone when we're texting? It's usually just fast and gradual, but heart and soul connection really has to be, you have to be down in it. And so I think we're going to figure out rules on how to control the screens. I have a friend, he's got a role for himself every morning before he looks at a screen. He goes outside and looks at the sky for a few minutes just to, okay, I'm going to look up. And then he has a rule where he's going to take one hour a day, one day a week, one, I think, week a year, no screens, just Sabbath. He's going to create Sabbaths. So that's one of the things I think we can do.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In his book, The Souls Code. Yeah. The acorn within the oak. My daughter, when she was five, she walked into an ice hockey rink. She felt at home. And she's now in her 20s and she lives and works for the Anaheim Ducks organization and teaches youth hockey. And she just feels at home there. And some people you just find that thing where you feel at home and trust the aesthetic sensibility of it.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find how aesthetic it is that I read a book when I was seven called Paddington the Bear. And at that moment I wanted to become a writer. It was just because I loved the feel of it. I have a quote in there from Annie Dillard who was interviewing a painter. She said, why'd you go into painting? And the woman just said, I love the smell of paint. It feels right. Something about it, my daughter.”
2019-05-20 · Oprah's Super Soul · David Brooks: The Quest for a Moral Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source