The idea that Bentham and Mill were maximizers is the greatest stretch of all. They were progressivists, committed to improving the societies in which they lived, not utopian maximizers.

In this era of globalization we are witnessing struggles within individual states about what their identity and interests consist in.

We live on a restless planet in a violent universe.

Apocalypses don't happen very often. They tend to be separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.

Since we're not very good at something as basic as controlling our reproduction, life is really bad for more people than ever before.

Moral revolutions are typically seen retrospectively. Prospectively, the revolutionaries tend to look like crazy people, and sometimes they are.

I take seriously the idea that we are African Apes who (at least for the moment) dominate the planet, but our psychology is pretty much what it was when we were living in small groups on the savanna.

One of the real dangers of our time is people's indifference to history.

Philosophers are smart, analytical, and skeptical. For these reasons they are relatively unbiased.

I'm a subjectivist about morality.

Ethics is prescriptive and can change behavior, but usually only at the margins.

If you are living an original life, there is absolutely no need to compete with anyone else.

Frivolous lawsuits are booming in this county. The U.S. has more costs of litigation per person than any other industrialized nation in the world, and it is crippling our economy.

War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perserverance, by time, and by practice.

I think he’s handling it with grace. A lot of teenage boys would sulk, or lurk around under your window with a boom box.

Unmediated joy was nowadays unfashionable.

Bridge is a game that separates the men from the boys. It also separates husbands and wives.

Better moods = better performance.

I always had this secret suspicion that I was special.

You really have to go searching desperately to find any contemporary examples of good, old-fashioned runaway inflation.

I love the music. I'm never, ever tired of playing it.