Quotes from Arthur C. Brooks

In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas said, "To love is to will the good of the other."10 The modern philosopher Michael Novak refines this further by adding two words: "To love is to will the good of the other as other" (emphasis mine).11 He continues: "Love is not sentimental, nor restful in illusions, but watchful, alert, and ready to follow evidence. It seeks the real as lungs crave air.

Edmund Burke wrote, "He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

What all addictions have in common is that they involve an unhealthy relationship with something unworthy of human love, be it booze, gambling, applause, or—yes—work.

bucket list, however: it makes us focus on the limits of time and thus on how to use time well. The idea of the bucket list is to make sure you don't get to the end and say, "I'm not ready to die! I've never ridden in a hot-air balloon!

Anyone who can't tell the difference between an ordinary Bernie Sanders supporter and a Stalinist revolutionary, or between Donald Trump's average voter and a Nazi, is either willfully ignorant or needs to get out of the house more.

Workaholism keeps you chained to your job. But even more, it keeps you stuck in all your old work patterns, because you fear doing anything that separates you from the day in, day out of your most important relationship. And that makes jumping to a new curve all but impossible.

mean it's hate speech or the person saying it is a deviant.

What workaholics truly crave isn't work per se; it is success. They kill themselves working for money, power, and prestige because these are forms of approval, applause, and compliments—which, like all addictive things, from cocaine to social media, stimulate the neurotransmitter dopamine.[8]

There is a wonderful little passage in the Confessions of Saint Augustine, written around the year 400. He starts by describing his insatiable cravings for success in the eyes of others: "I panted after honors . . . boiling with the feverishness of consuming thoughts." (Every success addict can relate to this.) He then describes coming across a beggar in the streets of Milan, whom he secretly admired: "He was joyous, I anxious; he void of care, I full of fears.

In your next phase of life . . . What activities will you keep? What activities will you evolve and do differently? What activities will you let go of? What new activities will you learn? And to start . . . What will you commit to doing in the next week to evolve into the new you? What will you commit to doing in the next month? What will you commit to doing within six months? In a year, what will be the first fruits to appear as a result of your commitments?

But to be constantly noticed, to achieve specialness, doesn't come cheap. Apart from a few reality TV stars and accidental celebrities, success is brutal work and takes sacrifices.

How many Thanksgivings do you have left?

The secret to happiness isn't falling in love; it's staying in love, which depends on what psychologists call "companionate love"—love based less on passionate highs and lows and more on stable affection, mutual understanding, and commitment.

The point isn't to depress anybody. It is to remind us that in denominating time in memorable, scarce events, we have a much better sense of its scarcity.

it was the worldwide spread of American-style free enterprise that saved billions from poverty by giving them their first opportunity to rise in history. Truly, this is America's gift to the world. Conservatives can and must champion this truth without apology or compromise. For the sake of all people, our end goal must be to make free enterprise as universally accepted and nonpartisan as civil rights are today.

Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy," wrote Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former famous Formula 1 race car driver. "For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success."[12] Making

From my earliest days, I learned of the evils of objectifying others.

Once and always my romantic love, she is also my best friend.

Christensen died a few months after I arrived at Harvard, but his legacy looms large at HBS, in no small part because of his famous book, How Will You Measure Your Life?[51] Christensen analyzes a good life well lived in the same way he would assess a company, and the book is well worth reading in its entirety.

You see, whether or not we want to admit it, political contempt and division are what economists call a demand-driven phenomenon. Famous people purvey it, but ordinary citizens are the ones creating a market for it.

But the implication remained: good things come to those who wait—and work, and sacrifice, and maybe even suffer.

1. ALLOCATE TIME WELL AHEAD OF TIME

Not everyone would, but you would—I know this because no one reading this far into this book is a slacker about self-development. Well, your spiritual development is that important. You must make the time by scheduling your meditation, prayer, reading, and practice. Every day.

The moral case against objectifying others is fairly straightforward. It starts to get more complicated when the objectifier and the one being objectified are the same person—in other words, with self-objectification, which scholars define as viewing oneself from a third-person perspective that does not consider one's full humanity.