It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.

Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men.

The psychological components of war have not gone away—dominance, vengeance, callousness, tribalism, groupthink, self-deception

Knights do protect ladies, but only to keep them from being abducted by other knights.

So holding many factors constant, we find that living in a civilization reduces one’s chances of being a victim of violence fivefold.

A sense of solidarity among fifteen-to-thirty-year-olds would be a menace to civilized society even in the best of times.

The one great universal in the study of violence is that most of it is committed by fifteen-to-thirty-year-old men.

The essence of a culture of honor is that it does not sanction predatory or instrumental violence, but only retaliation after an insult or other mistreatment.

Religious people today, compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality while getting their actual morality from more modern principles.

Today we recognize that the emotion of disgust evolved as an unconscious defense against biological contamination.

Organisms are selected to deploy violence only in circumstances where the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs.

I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.

When people start talking about Right and Left, they stop talking about right and wrong.

Our society nurtures the illusion that all the rewards go to the people who are perfect. But many of us are finding out that trying to be perfect is costly.

Your clothes should always make a statement.

Those days are over. I have to be won all over again every time you see me.

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acpuire it.

I truly believed that tonight would never happen, that I would never sing these songs to you again. But then I'm a fool, which you've probably worked out by now.

Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.

One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.

It's hard to feel middle-aged, because how can you tell how long you are going to live?