Religiosity developed because successful religions made groups more efficient at turning resources into offspring.” (including art, cathedrals, cities, earthworks, etc?)
The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.
Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.
Experiment participants asked to pick which politician looked more confident in a photograph picked the winner of the race two thirds of the time. This phenomenon held up even when they only glimpsed the photographs for a 10th of a second.
Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder. Leon Cass
It is not clear that married people are, on average, happier than those who never married, because unhappily married people are the least happy group of all and they pull down the average.
Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism.
Asking children to grow virtues hydroponically, looking only within themselves for guidance, is like asking each one to invent a personal language―a pointless and isolating task if there is no community with whom to speak.
Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.
Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.
Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.
The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.
Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.
Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking.
If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own.
When opponents of evolution object that human beings are not mere apes, they are correct. We are also part bee.
With all foreign travel, you learn as much about where you’re from as what you’re visiting.
We live in the tension between neophillia, or attraction to new things, and neophobia, or fear of new things.
The author found participants in a study able to come up with more reasons to support their position but not anymore likely to change their minds based on contradictory evidence. In effect, they enlist their IQ on behalf of their instincts.
Focusing on effective leadership without focusing on a willingness to follow is like studying clapping by studying only the left hand.
The advantage which disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined hordes follows cheaply from the confidence which each man feels in his comrades. Charles Darwin
Cultural change works orders of magnitude faster then genetic change. Stephen Jay Gould
Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.
If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.
Morality often involves tension within the group motivated by competition between different groups.
Gossip is a policeman and a teacher. Without it, there would be chaos and ignorance.
Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.
Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up?