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" Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance. "

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" There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success. "

" Whenever you speak to someone, you are presuming the two of you have a certain degree of familiarity - which your words might alter. So every sentence has to do two things at once: convey a message and continue to negotiate that relationship. "

" I think the reason that swearing is both so offensive and so attractive is that it is a way to push people's emotional buttons, and especially their negative emotional buttons. Because words soak up emotional connotations and are processed involuntarily by the listener, you can't will yourself not to treat the word in terms of what it means. "

" The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing. "

" We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable? "

" We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives. "

" Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence, accident, or disease. "

" There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization. "

" Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along. "

" Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them. "

" Paris Hilton, it turns out, is related to fellow celebrity jailbirds Zsa Zsa Gabor and G. Gordon Liddy. "

" As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. "

" All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news. "

" Why is it surprising that scientists might have long hair and wear cowboy boots? In fields like neuroscience, where the events you are recording are so minute, I suspect scientists cultivate a boring, reliable image. A scientist with a reputation for flamboyance might be suspect. "

" Everywhere you look for comparisons of life under anarchy and life under government, life under government is less violent. "

" For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'sieges' instead of calling them 'genocides.' "

" I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew. "

" As women are empowered, violence can come down, for a number of reasons. By all measures, men are the more violent gender. "

" When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is shy in personality but flamboyant in his philanthropy. "

" Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family. "

" The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer. "

" If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think. "

" Astrology had an important role in the ancient world. You can't understand many things unless you know something about astrology - the plays of Shakespeare and so on. "

" You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain. "

" I get drawn in when I feel there is something deep and mysterious going on beneath the surface of something. "

" Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality - the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world. "

" Though as a psychologist I like to think that nothing human is foreign to me, I admit to having been repeatedly flabbergasted by the insouciance, and sometimes relish, with which our ancestors carried out and witnessed unspeakable cruelties. "

" Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture. "

" If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called 'pure evil' because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable. "

" I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world. "