Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

Every president, Democratic or Republican, simply works on the supposition that it's better to keep jobs in America than let them go to Mexico.

I love teaching. I wouldn't take a job that didn't include it.

I think we're going to care more about Americans than Africans. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and I don't think it's ever going to go away that people care more about their families than strangers, and their communities over other communities. But I think it would transform the world in such a good way if we could just acknowledge, at least intellectually, that an African life and an American life are the same.

For the most part, people use "empathy" to mean everything good. For instance, many medical schools have courses in empathy. But if you look at what they mean, they just want medical students to be nicer to their patients, to listen to them, to respect them, to understand them. What's not to like? If they were really teaching empathy, then I'd say there is a world of problems there.

I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.

A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.