The fascinating thing about our best and worst behaviors isn't the behavior itself - the brain tells the muscles to do something or other - big deal. It's the meaning of the behavior.

Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch.

We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.

The purpose of science is not to cure us of our sense of mystery and wonder, but to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate it.

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart.

But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.

The less it is possible that something can be, the more it must be.

Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads.

We all seek out stress. We hate the wrong kinds of stress but when it's the right kind, we love it - we pay good money to be stressed by a scary movie, a roller coaster ride, a challenging puzzle.

What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.

Hundreds of wise men cannot make the world a heaven, but one idiot is enough to turn it into a hell.

In this effort to attain security, independence and privacy of course were suspect....

A pencil is a wand and a weapon. Be careful. Protect yourself. It can be glorious.

People not only gain understanding through reflection, they evaluate and alter their own thinking.

Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with the government of men.

That peculiarly American religion, President-worship.

Liberals want to manage the damage with government programs to take care of those who have fallen between the cracks. Populists want to fix the cracks so that people don't fall in the first place.

Character is what you have when nobody is looking.

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

I couldn't understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could hear my heart beating.