Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

Everyone's pedigree merges into everyone else's pedigree. So if you go back far enough, everyone is related.

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

The reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong level of analysis. You have to look at a higher level of organization.

We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.

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

People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time.