We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.

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.

A company has integrity when its words and actions consistently match the branding effort.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

For forms of government, let fools contest; Whate'er is best administered, is best.

Numbers are the most certain things we have.

Whoever has character also has his typical experience, which returns over and over again.

Together, we can bring our planet's heartbeat back.

I like a book to be full of the memory of what it is, a voice in an endless conversation, and yet at the same time to be new.

Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.

You know well that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.

If you don't take it for granted that the other man will do his job, you're not an executive.