Some Poor grad student pressing on the flanks of a hamster and out comes a doctorate on the other side

We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

The fascinating thing about our best and worst behaviors isn't the behavior itself - the brain tells the muscles to do something or other - big deal. It's the meaning of the behavior.

Finish this lecture, go outside, and unexpectedly get gored by an elephant, and you are going to secrete glucocorticoids. There's no way out of it. You cannot psychologically reframe your experience and decide you did not like the shirt, here's an excuse to throw it out - that sort of thing.

Hormones influencing the sensitivity of the person to environmental stimuli.

Almost always, genes are about potentials and vulnerabilities rather than about determinism.