David Brooks · 288 pages
Rating: (3.6K votes)
“Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“To get the most attention, the essay should be wrong. Logical essays are read and understood. But an illogical or wrong essay will prompt dozens of other writers to rise and respond, thus giving the author mounds of publicity.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“You can't really know God if you ignore his laws, especially the ones that regulate the most intimate spheres of life. You may be responsible and healthy, but you will also be shallow and inconsequential.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“They turn nature into an achievement course, a series of ordeals and obstacles they can conquer. They go into nature to behave unnaturally. In nature animals flee cold and seek warmth and comfort. But Bobo naturalists flee comfort and seek cold and deprivation.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“The first thing you see, covering yards and yards of one wall, is an object that looks like a nickel-plated nuclear reactor, but is really the stove.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“a statement by Bertrand Russell ... embodies the tone of heroic denunciation that you can muster only if you have drunk deeply from the cup of your own oracular majesty”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“If the article mentions some celebrity-perhaps a recently dead politician-the author will want to mention some pointless detail from her last meeting with that person or the emotions she experienced when learning of the subject's death.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“If done correctly, these techniques can allow the Bobo pilgrim to have 6 unforgettable moments a morning, 2 rapturous experiences over lunch, 1.5 profound insights in the afternoon (on average), and .667 life-altering epiphanies after each sunset.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“Bobos are uncomfortable with universal moral laws that purport to regulate pleasure. Bobos prefer more prosaic self-controlled regimes. The things that are forbidden are unhealthy or unsafe. The things that are encouraged are enriching or calorie burning. In other words, we regulate our carnal desires with health codes instead of moral codes.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“If you live in a society like ours, in which people seldom object if they hear someone taking the Lord's name in vain but are outraged if they see a pregnant woman smoking, then you are living in a world that values the worldly more than the divine.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“The main job of radicals in the Noam Chomsky or G. Gordon Liddy mode is to go around from one scruffy lecture hall to another reminding audiences while they may be disdained or ignored by the mainstream culture, they are actually right about everything.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
“[The public intellectual] will also describe how she can work a pop culture reference into her essay, comparing the Supreme Court to the creature in the number-one box office movie of the moment. Editors like this sort of mass-media integration, first, because it gives them a way to illustrate the piece, and second because they are under the delusion that pop-culture references will propel a piece's readership into the five-digit area.”
― David Brooks, quote from Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
David Brooks
Born place: in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Born date August 10, 1961
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“I guess we are juste two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl," I say.
Her eyes narrow. "I've heard that somewhere before."
I smile and point at her briefly. "Pink Floyd. But it's the truth."
"You think we're lost?"
I tilt my head back a little and look up at the stars behind her and say, "In society maybe. But together, no. I think we're right where we need to be.”
― J.A. Redmerski, quote from The Edge of Always
“And you’ll put a deposit on the house tomorrow?”
― Ira Levin, quote from The Stepford Wives
“To survive in most arenas of power you must first understand that everyone lies, everyone cheats, and no one is your friend. The paradox is that not everyone lies, and not everyone cheats, and some people are your friends. The problem lies in the fact that one smiling face and handshake looks much like another, and when you’re surrounded by consummate liars, how to tell the truth from the lie, friend from foe? Better to treat everyone professionally, pleasantly, smile, nod, be friendly, but never be friends. Because there is no way to tell who is on your side, not really.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Seduced by Moonlight
“I have lived with others more powerful than I in Belle Morte’s line for centuries, Anita. I, more than most, know just how much you must fight every night of your existence not to be consumed by their power.” He paused and then whispered so that it filled the darkened car, “If you are not careful, their beauty will become both heaven and hell, you will betray every oath, abandon every loyalty, give up your heart, your mind, your body, and your immortal soul to have them near you but one more night. Then one cold night, a hundred years after the passion is spent, and nothing but ashes remain, you look up and see someone gazing at you and you know that look, you’ve seen it before. A hundred years later and someone gazes upon you as if you were heaven itself, but you know in your heart of hearts that its not heaven you’re offering them, its hell.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Incubus Dreams
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter where we go, because I just want to be whenever you are.”
― Tara Hudson, quote from Hereafter
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