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.

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.

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.

I think empathy is really important for pleasure.

But the truth, I realize now, is that I always hoped. Even if I knew my hope was a lie, I held on to it.

At least when it comes to light pollution what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.

Our biggest fear is that 'Food, Inc.' will move heavy-handed food-safety regulations forward.

If you have a child, you'll notice they have two states: asleep or online.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

Men are; more inclined to ask curious questions than to obtain necessary instruction.

To feed death with her works is here life's doom.

Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.

It is dangerously destabilizing to have half the world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival.