We need more science, but what we especially need is science fiction.

In this era of globalization we are witnessing struggles within individual states about what their identity and interests consist in.

We live on a restless planet in a violent universe.

Apocalypses don't happen very often. They tend to be separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.

Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before.

Moral revolutions are typically seen retrospectively. Prospectively, the revolutionaries tend to look like crazy people, and sometimes they are.

I take seriously the idea that we are African Apes who (at least for the moment) dominate the planet, but our psychology is pretty much what it was when we were living in small groups on the savanna.

One of the real dangers of our time is people's indifference to history.

Philosophers are smart, analytical, and skeptical. For these reasons they are relatively unbiased.

I'm a subjectivist about morality.

Ethics is prescriptive and can change behavior, but usually only at the margins.

If you're male, and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.

You are likely to lose the heat of your passion irrespective of how hot it was when you surrender yourself to a leader with lukewarm attitude.

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.

Give more than is expected, love more than seems wise, serve more than seems necessary, and help more than is asked.

Let frugality and industry be our virtues.

America has a right to be a leader. This leadership should be realized through partnership, not domination.

In America, any boy can grow up to become president. Or, if he never grows up, vice president.

Suppression of impulses that would put you in danger is obviously an important neurobiological function.

Slight was the thing I bought, small was the debt I thought, Poor was the loan at best - God! but the interest!

Speaking of [Philip] Larkin, in his poem about the First World War he wrote something like, "Never such innocence, before or since, that turned itself to past without a word".