Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats.

Families survive the terrible twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons.

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.

I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.

The fact that something can be used for good isn't necessarily a knockdown argument for it.

Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.

The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer.

I love teaching. I wouldn't take a job that didn't include it.

What I mean by "empathy" is putting yourself in other people's shoes, feeling what they feel.

She could smell damprot, high, sweet, and cloying. She could smell madness like dead vegetables in a dark cellar.

In times of solitude, we are still to hear the voice of God.

You know you're in a good place when you no longer are interested in looking back. You prefer to enjoy the journey.

And what most people don't understand is the bulk of business in this country is small business.

I'm 31 years old and can't complain about the money I make and the smiles I can create on people's faces.

In matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little.

Your love for me is founded in a sentiment. My love for you is founded in the body. A precarious interchange.

I know I'm responsible for not having got the kind of roles that I'd have liked to.

I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them.

From 1980 to 1990, I shot more films than any other actor in the Screen Actors Guild, apart from Gene Hackman.