Paul Bloom Quotes

Families survive the terrible twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons.

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.

I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.

The fact that something can be used for good isn't necessarily a knockdown argument for it.

I love teaching. I wouldn't take a job that didn't include it.

The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer.

Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.

I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence.

When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy.

In my own life, I do not live like an effective altruist. An effective altruist would really disapprove of my life. I don't give enough to charity and I still have both my kidneys.

Even the charities I give to are related to things that touch my life, like the Special Olympics. I'm not fully rational; I'm swayed by my biases and my emotions.

Because of empathy, we care more for, and devote far more resources to, someone who is familiar, from our country or our group, than a stranger.

Every president, Democratic or Republican, simply works on the supposition that it's better to keep jobs in America than let them go to Mexico.

By “empathy,” some people mean everything that is good - compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world - and I'm for all of those things. I'm not a monster.

I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

I think empathy can serve as a moral spark, motivating us to do good things. But anything can be a moral spark.

My younger son told me nobody uses email anymore. I'm this old fogie with my email. I don't know what I'm supposed to communicate with now - SnapChat?

It would be nice if everybody who had something interesting to say about my work could say it politely and civilly, but it doesn't work that way... Sometimes people are just really nasty.

I am never going to write about dogs again. You can write about Islam, you can write about sexuality, but no, not dogs.

And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data.

Some people think that without that spark of empathy we would do nothing, but that's just flat-out wrong. You could feel compassion for somebody without the spark of empathy.

Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care.

I have two teenage sons, and they're both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they're always on social media.

It's hard to pull apart empathy from compassion. What is really clear is that we innately care for other people at least to some extent.

Because of empathy, stories of the suffering of one person could lead us into a war that could kill millions of people.

If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks much better than anyone else thinks that they do.

Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats.

I think Americans are always going to care more about Americans than about Mexicans.

Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter.

I think empathy is really important for pleasure.

What I mean by "empathy" is putting yourself in other people's shoes, feeling what they feel.

Imagination is Reality Lite - a useful substitute when the real pleasure is inaccessible, too risky, or too much work.

Imagination tends to be truly useful if accompanied by the power of mental control - if the worlds in one's head can be purposefully manipulated and distinguished from the real one outside it.