Instead of showing strangers kindness and giving them the benefit of the doubt, we increasingly show them only fear, and that is bad for us and them.

The greatest moral failing is to condemn something as a moral failing: no vice is worse than being judgmental.

No genuine choice is ever simply a matter of the arbitrary exercise of will. Take your choice of lunch today. You can't decide to want anything, but what you want will at least in part be a result of a series of other choices and judgments you've made in your life to date.

Being a good neighbour is about compassion, which is as warm-blooded as justice is cool-headed.

Heathens are unredeemed outcasts from heaven who roam the planet without hope of surviving the deaths of their bodies. They may have values but they are not secured by any divine source. Yet we embrace this because we think it represents the truth.

Nature deals the cards without thought or care, and there is no point in blaming the dealer. All we can do is make the best of the hands we have been dealt.

No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.