I get drawn in when I feel there is something deep and mysterious going on beneath the surface of something.

Tom Hanks, who starred in 'The Da Vinci Code,' turns out to be related to a number of the historic characters that feature in 'The Da Vinci Code,' including William the Conqueror and Shakespeare.

Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people.

Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.

The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

We often feel that a clever aphorism captures a truth that would require pages to defend in any other way.

Fiction is empathy technology.