The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives for acts of violence that bring them no tangible benefit.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.

I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties.

Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.

I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

Men who’ve made choices always feel they own their destiny. Few ever think to ask who shaped and offered up those choices. Who dangles the carrot they think they’ve chosen to follow.

What scoundrels we would be if we did for ourselves what we are ready to do for Italy.

An overly pragmatic attitude is not productive on the long run.

And the God who hears is also the one who speaks. He has spoken and is still speaking. Humanity remains his project, not its own, and his initiatives are always at work among us.

Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal.

I didn't have an agent, I didn't have a headshot. I didn't even know if anyone would know where to find me. I just went back to high school and started playing with my band.

I began imagining scenes in public which some drunk would come up to me and slap me in the face. Nothing like that ever happened, but I often wonder if I would have turned the other cheek

One of the real problems of society is that its far too atomized, what sociologists call secondary associations.

Since Social Security was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 to ensure economic security for American workers, poverty among American seniors has dramatically declined.