One of the perks of being a psychologist is access to tools that allow you to carry out the injunction to know thyself.

You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.

Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.

I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology.

Humans are so innately hardwired for language that they can no more suppress their ability to learn and use language than they can suppress the instinct to pull a hand back from a hot surface.