Religiosity developed because successful religions made groups more efficient at turning resources into offspring." (including art, cathedrals, cities, earthworks, etc?)

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

Reciprocity is a deep instinct; it is the basic currency of social life.

The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.

Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide

Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.

The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brain works so well that our reasoning can work at all.

Diversity is not a virtue. Diversity is a good only to the extent that it advances other virtues, justice or inclusiveness of others who have previously been excluded.

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into teams … but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality.

We read to know we are not alone.

Approach a trip as a chance to collect unique experiences, not passport stamps, postcards and snapshots in front of famous monuments.

It is these empty spaces you have to watch out for, as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened.

I was on a path, and I became determined to give it everything I had — no matter what.

The slinky and post-it notes are both products that came from mistakes. Don’t forget that mishaps can be turned into triumphs.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

So I think the winners in recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better, which people really want.

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

If you're a strong female, you don't need permission.

In a landscape where nothing officially exists (otherwise it would not be 'desert'), absolutely anything becomes thinkable, and may consequently happen.