Fiction is empathy technology.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.

I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties.

Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.

I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

Dreaming is easy. Creativity is a lot of work.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

It is no part of a physician's business to use either persuasion or compulsion upon the patients.

I used to be a longshoreman. I didn't go to college. I have a voice that when I say something, it can sound way meaner than you think it is.

Do you guys think its worse to wear a fedora or kill 15 people?

I just think that all of us in this room should have a voice in how the USA is represented. And he don't allow us our voice, that's all I'm saying.

Ah my deare God! though I am clean forgot, Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.

Love is the hardest thing to grasp. You have to seize it at once, else it may be too late.

Trump is committed to being the president for every American.

The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.