Pre-state societies were far more violent than our own.

The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise

In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award for accomplishing with pinpoint precision and unerring reliability, the feat of sitting exactly where it is sitting. Nothing would prevent us from agreeing with the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn that rocks are smarter than cats because rocks have the sense to go away when you kick them.

In societies no less than individuals, acknowledging our limitations may ultimately be more humane than denying them.

Words let us say the things we want to say and also things we would be better off not having said. They let us know the things we need to know, and also things we wish we didn't.

A...reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.

Theories of art carry the seeds of their own destruction.