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David Brooks

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

1%ers What sort of people go on a trip like this? It is a sign of how stratified things have become that even within the top 1 percent there are differences between the single-digit millionaires and the double- or triple-digit millionaires. The people on this trip were by and large on the lower end of the upper class. One had a family carpet business. Another was an I.T. executive at an insurance company. David Brooks, on a $120,000-per-person, 24-day, round-the-world sightseeing tour T: The New York Times Style Magazine, November 15, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence Over the past few months, I've become an A.I. limitationist. That is, I believe that while A.I. will be an amazing tool for, say, tutoring children  all around the world, or summarizing meetings, it is no match for human intelligence. It doesn’t possess understanding, self- awareness, concepts, emotions, desires, a body or biology. It’s bad at causal thinking. It doesn’t possess the nonverbal, tacit know- ledge that humans take for granted. It’s not  sentient. It does many things way faster than us, but it lacks the depth of a human mind. David Brooks, New York Times, July 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Conservatism What passes for “conservatism” now, however, is nearly the opposite of the Burkean conservatism I encountered then. Today, what passes for the worldview of  “the right” is a set of resentful animosities, a partisan attachment to Donald Trump or  Tucker Carlson, a sort of mental brutalism. The rich philosophical perspective that dazzled me then has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression. David Brooks, The Atlantic, January/February 2022 [“then” is the 1980s] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Institutions Institutions instill habits, habits become virtues, virtues become character.  David Brooks, The Atlantic, January/February 2022 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy  From each according to his abilities,  to each according to his abilities. David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans Party Trump brought the three horsemen of the apocalypse — immorality, dishonesty and bigotry. The party, complicit in all that, is dead to me, even though, I have to say,  a good chunk of my friends are Republicans. David Brooks, New York Times, January 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union We are now in a country in which major presidential candidates can gibe about the menstrual cycles of their interviewers and the penis size of their opponents. We are now in a society in which the childish desires of a reality-TV narcissist can insult the inheritance that Washington and Hamilton risked their lives to bequeath. We are now in a society in which serial insults to basic decency aren't automatically disqualifying. David Brooks, New York Times, October 21, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
 
State of the union We've got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar. David Brooks, New York Times, May 15, 2017 © 2020 Kwiple.com