To support the people we care about is intrinsic, it is not instrumental. It's not something we do because we're hoping to get some other outcome.

I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.

Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.

The more obsessively we focus on what a particular food is going to do for us, the less healthy we've become. Simple pleasures become complicated.

The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

The largest and most powerful computers are still no match for the smallest and weakest humans.

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.

What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.

Homeopathy cures a larger percentage of cases than any other form of treatment and is beyond doubt safer and more economical.

I've always enjoyed playing a little left of center characters. Otherwise I'd be on a soap opera.

I don't feel I have the right to snuff the lives of chicken and fish.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

But they were wrong. There was a reason.

The Bible definitely is infallible, how else could it survive so many years of bad preaching?

I have left all my business and all my husbands; I have taken with me only fair weather and my children, which is as much as I want.

Reality is negotiable.

Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.

They hadn't much faith in travel, nor a great belief in a change of scene as a panacea for spiritual ills; they were simply glad to be going.