Moral revolutions are typically seen retrospectively. Prospectively, the revolutionaries tend to look like crazy people, and sometimes they are.

In this era of globalization we are witnessing struggles within individual states about what their identity and interests consist in.

We live on a restless planet in a violent universe.

Apocalypses don't happen very often. They tend to be separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.

Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before.

I take seriously the idea that we are African Apes who (at least for the moment) dominate the planet, but our psychology is pretty much what it was when we were living in small groups on the savanna.

One of the real dangers of our time is people's indifference to history.

Philosophers are smart, analytical, and skeptical. For these reasons they are relatively unbiased.

I'm a subjectivist about morality.

Ethics is prescriptive and can change behavior, but usually only at the margins.

I think that by the middle of this century people will still be eating meat (though less), and their meat will mostly be produced in factories through synthetic processes, cell cultures, and so on.

They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.

Why is man obliged to learn ignorance?

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity it destroys religion it destroys states it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

Human mercy is proof of having received divine mercy.

I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters. He's influenced everyone who's ever done improvisational comedy. You look to Jonathan Winters for inspiration. He paved the way.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.