“Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reason that gave us the means to despoil the planet and threaten our species with weapons of mass destruction? In this way of thinking, it's character and conscience, not cold-hearted calculation, that will save us. Besides, a human being is not a brain on a stick. My fellow psychologists have shown that we're led by our bodies and our emotions and use our puny powers of reason merely to rationalize our gut feelings after the fact”

“Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.”

“There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal.”

“Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.”

“The decline of violence isn't a steady inclined plane from an original state of maximal and universal bloodshed. Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with.”

“Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with.”

“Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.”

“The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally.”

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

“America had, for one thing, lived in anarchy for - until much more recently than Europe. We had the Wild West, where the cliche of the cowboy movies was the nearest sheriff is 90 miles away, and so you had to pack a gun and defend yourself.”

“Though knowledge itself increasingly ignores boundaries between fields, professors are apt to organize their pedagogy around the methods and history of their academic subculture rather than some coherent topic in the world.”