If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that perpetually stuck on north is worthless.

Arthritic toothless people who love orgasms are more likely to reproduce than are limber, toothy people who do not.

People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.

We don't believe other people's experiences can tell us all that much about our own. I think this is an illusion of uniqueness.

Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.

The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.

The human brain is the only object in the known universe that can predict its own future and tell its on fortune. The fact that we can make disastrous decisions even as we foresee their consequences is the great, unsolved mystery of human behavior. When you hold your fate in your hands, why would you ever make a fist?