Evolution acts slowly. Our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted reproductive success in the ancestral environment.

Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.

High status males had multiple wives or additional mating opportunities in the ancestral environment.

As for leadership, I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president.

Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors.

If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience.

Primates will continue to play social games without the least insight into what is killing them.

Cult recruiting methods based on dosing victims with the brain chemicals released during capture bonding would make cults even more of a problem than they are now.

Could people be trained to be less gullible? Or are you as stuck with gullibility as you are with skin colour?

Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.

Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses.

You're so beautiful, " he told her. Her laughter tickled his ears. "You realize you're looking at my back, right?" "Mmm-hmmm. And it's a very beautiful back.

The intelligence community does not have complete 'eyes on' the totality of the Iranian nuclear program, nor can it guarantee that we have identified all of Iran's nuclear facilities and processes.

I never wanted to have a profession, and I've succeeded in not having one, or if I did have one it never paid, or it's never been especially long-term.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

It is in bed that we learn to bear the inevitable. We are learning this all the time while we lie with our face turned to the wall thinking we are doing nothing.

In the quiet of this day may you know the greatness of your spirit and may your hopes fly on the wings of possibility.

Voters might have short memories. Politicians do not.

Listen my love, illumination is eternal. Now is always evolving. As there are billions of stars, there are billions of steps. As there are billions of souls, there are billions of ways to grow.

Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion.

By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression is committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another as his enemy.