If I had to fault President [Barack] Obama, I would say that sometimes governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization.

Our emotions tell us what to value. They're like a little GPS system: Go that way. Don't go that way.

The politics is broken up and down. And Trump may emerge from a reality TV world that is much more powerful than we think. And there is the prospect that this is where we are, which is an horrific thought.

We are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other.

Learning was a by-product of her search for pleasure

Stairway to Wisdom”) David Brooks detailed the needed ingredients to gaining a deep understanding of a social problem, beginning with the data and moving on to first-hand accounts. The highest rung on his stairway, though, went beyond those: “Empathy opens you up to absorb the good and the bad. Love impels you not just to observe but to seek union—to think as another thinks and feel as another feels.

For us going forward, it's to not reverse the dynamism of American society and the diversity. It's to pay attention to the people who are being ruined by it, and so this doesn't happen again.