Sports is to war as pornography is to sex. We get to exercise some ancient, ancient drives.

We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet.

The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.

It's a basic fact about being human that sometimes the self seems to just melt away.

And it’s not just that ‘we all need somebody to lean on’; recent work on giving support shows that caring for others is often more beneficial than is receiving help. . . . We need the give and the take, we need to belong. An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.

Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up?

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