We live in the tension between neophillia, or attraction to new things, and neophobia, or fear of new things.

Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.

Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.

If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.

Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.

Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.

Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder. Leon Cass

The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.

Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking.

With all foreign travel, you learn as much about where you're from as what you're visiting.

It's been so long, I don't remember what okay feels like.

Our home is a belonging place.

...we spend more time gazing at luminous screens than into the eyes of our loved ones.

That's what people respect, the fact that I wasn't a chump that laid on his back and gave up.

I feel good hitting in the three-hole. I guess that's where everybody wants to be. You want the responsibility of hitting in the middle of the lineup.

Boy's natural play is rough and tumble play, it's the universal play of little boys. And it's very different from aggression. And we are a society that's failing to understand the distinction.

When people say they love you, you just have to decide to believe them, because you'll never know for sure.

a poem is like a wine glass in which you can hold up a little bit of reality and taste it.

Most men had rather say a smart thing than do a good one. John P. Kotter, Leading Change.

Haters are the people who will broadcast your failures and whisper your success.