I would say to anybody who thinks that all the problems in philosophy can be translated into empirically verifiable answers - whether it be a Lawrence Krauss thinking that physics is rendering philosophy obsolete or a Sam Harris thinking that neuroscience is rendering moral philosophy obsolete - that it takes an awful lot of philosophy - philosophy of science in the first case, moral philosophy in the second - even to demonstrate the relevance of these empirical sciences.

What is love? When you love somebody then I mean we all want good things to happen to ourselves and keep the bad things at bay. When you love somebody you want that as much for them if not more than you do for yourself.

Mother' is not an identity one can just try on for size.

What is play and delightful one kind of child is coercion and torture for another, and will not take no matter how much coercion is applied.

Given cognitive vulnerabilities, it would be convenient to have an arrangement whereby reality could tell us off; and that is precisely what science is. Scientific methodology is the arrangement that allows reality to answer us back.

Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.

We may not need God to tell us where the world came from, but we need God to be able to live moral lives and for there to be morality in the first place.