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

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.

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.

Liberals and conservatives are opponents in the most literal sense, each using the myth of pure evil to demonize the other side and unite there own.

Because I think people must be the same everywhere. Only these people are in my bones.

At this moment, all I'm thinking about is what I'd give up for the chance to kiss her or to run my fingers through her dark hair.

Science is the pursuit of pure truth, and the systematizing of it.

We treat this world of ours as though we have a spare in the trunk.

For a machine to run smoothly and predictably, its parts must be standard and hence replaceable, features which contribute, respectively, to modern depersonalization and anxiety.

Don't be ashamed of being a woman and don't be ashamed to be an accomplished woman.

I'm relatively physically adept and I like throwing myself around. Once, twice, but then you get to nine, ten, eleven and to try and make it look realistic all the time, that's not very pleasant.

Not being optimistic falls a long way short of predicting that all is finished.

I have found that nothing so deceives your adversaries as telling them the truth.

Your capability is constant, but how much of it you use depends upon the identity you have for yourself.