Most of our social nature is like that of other primates - we're mostly out for ourselves.

Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.

If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.

The president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (though not Jesus), glorify America's heroes and history,quote its sacred texts (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), and perform the transubstantiation of pluribus unum.

You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.

Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide