We live in a world in which everyone wants solutions. But we can't find solutions if we don't understand the problems, and we can't understand the problems without knowing how we got here.

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.

Be patient and open-minded in your interactions with others

It is impossible for darkness to reign in the presence of a star.

Spirituality is feeling a oneness with humanity.

We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody's.

If my decision is wrong, at least I will have learned something new. There is always next time.

When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.

I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.

Rejoice that man is hurled, From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled!

If we get total certainty, we get … bored out of our minds. So, God, in Her infinite wisdom, gave us a second human need, which is uncertainty. We need variety. We need surprise.

I see myself as an instrument of the Almighty and go on my way, regardless of transient opinions and views.