An eye for beauty locks onto faces that show signs of health and fertility - just as one would predict if it had evolved to help the beholder find the fittest mate.

My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal police went on strike. Within hours, mayhem and rioting broke out and the Mounties had to be called in to restore order. It instilled in me that one's convictions can be subjected to empirical test.

The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.

A successful learner, . . . must be constrained to draw some conclusions from the input and not others.

I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.

We instinctively fear snakes, but we appear not to be afraid of fast cars, which are a real danger now. This suggests our emotions were shaped by our evolutionary environment not the one we grew up in.

My laptop has freed me to travel.