Bejinha

“If one group of young people approach adulthood as an aesthetic experience, another group tries to treat adulthood as much as possible like a continuation of school. These students usually went to competitive colleges and tend to come from the upper strata of society. They were good at getting admitted into places, so they apply to companies that have competitive hiring procedures. As students, they enjoyed the borrowed prestige of high-status colleges, so as adults they enjoy the borrowed prestige of high-status companies and service organizations. As students, they were good at winning gold stars, and so they follow a gold-star-winning kind of life when they enter the workforce, and their parents get to brag that they work at Google or Williams & Connolly, or that they go to Harvard Business School.”
― David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

“In this way, moral formation is not individual; it is relational. Character is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. Character emerges from our commitments. If you want to inculcate character in someone else, teach them how to form commitments—temporary ones in childhood, provisional ones in youth, permanent ones in adulthood. Commitments are the school for moral formation. When your life is defined by fervent commitments, you are on the second mountain.”
― David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

“Marshall McLuhan was harsh but not wrong when he observed, “Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.” Recommitment often means putting your own sins on the table. Forbearance means acknowledging the wrongs that have been committed, and even the anger that they have created, but it puts”
― David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

“While it pretends not to, it subliminally sends the message that those who are smarter and more accomplished are actually worth more than those who are not.”
― David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life