A lot of people think Barack Obama should have responded to the Russian hacking of the U.S. elections weeks ago, months ago. So these happened on his watch. There's nothing wrong with him dealing with it.

To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.

The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it's not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It's not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It's not nearly as big a problem as the nation's stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent.

The brain writes the autobiography of our species at the conscious level.

Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views.

The people who really have character make deep, unshakable connections to something outside themselves.

Economists sometimes do try to reduce behavior to law-like predictability. But people respond differently to different primes, to different contexts even from one moment to the next. We possess multiple selves that are aroused by different circumstances.