"A person who is interrupted while performing a task takes 50% more time to complete it and make 50% more errors."
- David Brooks
"If colleges are going to justify themselves, they are going to have to thrive at those things that require physical proximity. That includes moral and spiritual development. Very few of us cultivate o..."
"Young Arab men are not going to walk away from extremism because they can suddenly afford a Slurpee. They will walk away when they can devote themselves to a some call to serve a cause that connects n..."
"You can't counter a heroic impulse with a mundane and bourgeois response. You can counter it only with a more compelling heroic vision."
"Students are taught how to do things, but many are not forced to reflect on why they should do them or what we are here for."
"Online life is so delicious because it is socializing with almost no friction."
"The struggle against the weakness in yourself is never a solitary struggle. No person can achieve self-mastery or his or her own."
"you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhe..."
"wonderful people are made, not born – that the people I admired had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue, built slowly from specific moral and spiritual accomplishments."
"People who live according to the pure code of honor are not governed by the profit motive; they are governed by the thymotic urge, the quest for recognition. They seek the sort of glory that can be wo..."