Stress is not the spice of life any more than arsenic is. And without it, you won't feel bored.

To believe that your husband, wife, parents, kids, boss, job, bank account, or body is even partly responsible for your emotions, to think that there are bullets 'out there' that you have to contend with, that there are stressful life events to overcome, is to miss something vital.

Even in this secular country, the threat posed by religious fundamentalists is never very far away. Every major religious text exhorts the same principles - that of unyielding obedience to a supernatural being, and renunciation of the intellect and personal aspirations.

Negative thoughts stick around because we believe them, not because we want them or choose them.

The hero is valorous because he stands up to every threat directed against his values. Heroism requires value conflict.

It's time we learned the truth about stress. It's time we identified the thoughts that actually create our stress and learned to dismantle them one by one.

Altruism demands that an individual serve others, but doesn’t stipulate whether those others should be one’s family, or the homeless, or society as a whole. Collectivism states that, in politics, society comes first and the individual must obey. Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.