If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

We would much rather blame nature for what we don't like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like.

To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us.

Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.

As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.

Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.