I have two teenage sons, and they're both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they're always on social media.

Families survive the terrible twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons.

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.

I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.

The fact that something can be used for good isn't necessarily a knockdown argument for it.

Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.

The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer.

I love teaching. I wouldn't take a job that didn't include it.

What I mean by "empathy" is putting yourself in other people's shoes, feeling what they feel.

God, unlike His creation, is always proactive and never reactive.

Lecturing Brooks was as useful as lecturing a cat.

I had a classic gym teacher in junior high who wore a weightlifter's belt all the time.

People want to see realism in action now.

You know what I think? I think there's a reason for everything. And I think that there's a plan for everyone. And I think that God has a big plan for me. Just not in this life.

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.

I decided at age 5 to start acting and I have never wanted to do anything else.

I want to have conversations, because they give you confidence in your choices. I learned it first on Boyz n the Hood, but it is not a race-based experience - it is part of the artistic process.

We practice to liberate ourselves from a burden.

Success doesn't make you and failure doesn't break you.