Diversity is not a virtue. Diversity is a good only to the extent that it advances other virtues, justice or inclusiveness of others who have previously been excluded.

Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.

I think that we Americans, in particular, tend to think too directly about problems. If there's a problem we want to basically go in with a screwdriver or else drop bombs on it. A better way to solve problems is to think indirectly and try to change the environment. So I think you can gain much better self-control not so much by working on yourself as by looking at the situations you're in and the people you hang around, and changing your environment.

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brain works so well that our reasoning can work at all.

Religious experiences are real and common, whether or not God exists, and these experiences often make people whole and at peace.

In college, I was dead set on being a philosophy major, because I wanted to figure out the meaning of life. Four years later I realized philosophy had really nothing to say about the meaning of life, and psychology and literature are really where it's at.

Do people believe in human rights because such rights actually exist, like mathematical truths, sitting on a cosmic shelf next to the Pythagorean theorem just waiting to be discovered by Platonic reasoners? Or do people feel revulsion and sympathy when they read accounts of torture, and then invent a story about universal rights to help justify their feelings?