What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.

Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

If optimism is important, it's because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope!

as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.