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Commonplace Book:

David Brooks

Brief Bio: A Canadian-born American conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for *The New York Times*

Lived: 1961-

For further info: en.wikipedia.org

Quotes:

“Life is a series of daring adventures from a secure base”

Human development research offers a different formula: All of life is a series of daring adventures from a secure base. If government can create a framework in which people grow up amid healthy families, nurturing schools, thick communities and a secure safety net, then they will have the resources and audacity to thrive in a free global economy and a diversifying skills economy.

March 3, 2017 from the essay “Trumpism at Its Best, Straight Up”

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“Life is more like settling a sequence of villages”

Life is not really an individual journey. Life is more like settling a sequence of villages. You help build a community at home, at work, in your town and then you go off and settle more villages.

28 May 2018 from the essay “The Strange Failure of the Educated Elite”

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“No Philosophy of Family Life”

In other words, while social conservatives have a philosophy of family life they can’t operationalize, because it no longer is relevant, progressives have no philosophy of family life at all, because they don’t want to seem judgmental. The sexual revolution has come and gone, and it’s left us with no governing norms of family life, no guiding values, no articulated ideals. On this most central issue, our shared culture often has nothing relevant to say—and so for decades things have been falling apart.

March 2020 from the article “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake”

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