Spare me therefore, your good intentions, your inner sensitivities, your unarticulated and unexpressed love. And spare me also these tedious psycho-historians which, by exposing the goodness inside the bad man, and the evil in the good-invariably establish a vulgar and perverse egalitarianism, as if the arrangement of what is outside and what inside makes no moral difference.

Feelings are the fine instruments which shape decision-making in an animal cursed and blessed with intelligence, and the freedom which is its corollary. They are signals directing us toward goodness, safety, pleasure, and group survival.

Because we are intelligent creatures-meaning that we are freed from instinctive and patterned behavior to a degree unparalleled in the animal kingdom-we are capable of, and dependent on, using rational choice to decide our futures.

I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.

In a world where survival is always seen as a struggle, and in which some pitfalls always exist, if something brings into question our confidence in our own coping ability, it will threaten our safety.

Life is to be enjoyed, not simply endured. Pleasure and goodness and joy support the pursuit of survival.

All of us inevitably spend our lives evolving from an initial to a final stage of dependence. If we are fortunate enough to achieve power and relative independence along the way, it is a transient and passing glory.