The person who has the most influence on me is my mother. Think of life as a flight where we fly higher and higher. If I were a bird that needs feathers to fly higher, I would regard my mother as my strongest feather.

...it honestly didn't matter how we humans got to be the way we are, whether evolution or special creation was responsible. What mattered and mattered desperately was our future development. Were we going to go on destroying God's creation, fighting each other, hurting the other creatures of the His planet?

It made me feel particularly sickened to know that this kind of callous attitude toward animals is repeated again and again in laboratories around this country.

Having respect for animals makes us better humans.

Even in chimps there is true altruistic behaviour; behaviour that doesn't fit into the sociobiological model that says you either help a close relative and thereby your own genes, or you help somebody else now in return for their help in the future. When a very high-ranking male chimpanzee rescues a little orphan, saving his life, that kind of explanation doesn't work.

A chimp would never plan to pull another's nails out.

Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything.