Genes and family may determine the foundation of the house, but time and place determine its form.

Well, if you can't then write in the press or put on television the importance of parents changing what they're doing, then the safe way out is to say, "Look, learning disabilities is probably genes. ADHD, probably genes." And that is the political alternative to not blaming the victim.

After hunger, a human's most important need is to know what is virtuous.

No one has found a gene for IQ. "Heritability" means that identicial twins are more similar than fraternal twins, right? Fraternal twins more similar than non-siblings. The heritability is 50 percent if your parents went to college. But if your parents never graduated high school the heritability is zero. Zero.

Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent, they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture - especially toward those in need. This inbuilt ethical sense is a biological feature of our species.

All the work on heritability was never based on looking at genes; it was based on the similarity between identical twins or between parents and children. Now that geneticists can look at genes, they can't find genes that account for more than 10 percent of the variation in any human trait.

We don't want to blame the victim. The civil rights movement had a profound effect on the United States and on the American mind, maybe unique in the world. Once we realized how victimized people of color had been, an honest empathy went out and that's how we got civil rights legislation.