We naturally assume that our mental structures are universal. But I suppose an outside biologist looking at us would see something very different. He would see that, like other organisms, we have a narrow sphere within which we are very good, but that sphere is very limited. And that, in fact, the very achievements we can have within that sphere are related to lack of achievements in other spheres.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

The United States is alone among all the countries in that it does not permit US military forces to be under any threat. Other countries are willing to have forces in peace-keeping operations where they sometimes are under threat, but the US is not willing to do that.

When I was growing up in the 1930s and '40s anti-Semitism was rampant. It wasn't like Nazi Germany but it was pretty serious - it was part of life.

There is extensive critical scholarship that provides illustrations in many areas of scholarship. I've discussed many cases myself, while also citing and often relying on academic studies that disentangle these webs of mystification woven for the general public. It's impossible to provide illustrations that would even approach accuracy, let alone carry any conviction, without going well beyond the bounds of this discussion.

We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.

[Health-care system] is largely privatized and unregulated. So of course it's highly inefficient and costly.