Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren.

Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.

The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they find themselves. What we need to do is to do more to help poor kids have such an environment.

The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

I'm culturally Jewish but, like most scientists, an atheist: I don't believe there's a God or supernatural world. Buddhism offers guidance on what to do in a world without God: It opines that truly being present in the world‚ experiencing and hanging out with your loved ones, provides all the significance you could want.