Most of what we think of as distinctively human has occurred in the last 10,000 years in the Holocene - a period in which the Earth was abnormally quiet.

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.

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

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.

But time has a way of stealthily deciding a person’s mind without her conscious knowledge, and as she studied and procrastinated, Poison found one day that she had come to know her choice.

Don't overwork your squad. If you're going to make a mistake, under-work them.

We are here today to make a choice between the quick and the dead.

The most powerful idea that's entered the world in the last few thousand years - the idea of grace - is the reason I would like to be a Christian.

Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.

I can't stand accessories.

A dream is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the waking world.

A lot of times in cinema today the women are overly sentimental, so I constantly try to do the opposite. I like strident women.

...the still point in a turning world.

I wouldn't play in Minnesota unless my career was at an end and I had to go to Minnesota to play the game.