In terms of the most unique thing we do socially, my vote goes to something we invented alongside cities -- we have lots of anonymous interactions and interactions with strangers. That has shaped us enormously.

We've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.

Only humans invent moralizing gods who monitor our behavior.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.

When you've wised up enough, there is a very clear conclusion that you have to reach after a while, which is, at the end of the day, it is really impossible for one person to make a difference.

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

What adolescence is about is by trial and error, honing a frontal cortex that is going to be more optimal by the time you're 25.

Outgroups mocking the ingroup is a weapon of the weak, lessening the sting of subordination. But when an ingroup mocks an outgroup, it solidifies negative stereotypes and reifies the hierarchy.

If some baboons just happen to be good at seeing water holes as half full instead of half empty... we should be able to as well.

Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday.

Baboons have the exact physiology as humans do. They also get the same stress-related illnesses, such as ulcers and heart disease.

You don't want to end up telling somebody who's homeless or a refugee that stress is all perceptual, because it sure isn't in those cases. But most of us have fairly neurotic middle-class stressors.

It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who can do the most acts of random kindness.

The fascinating thing about our best and worst behaviors isn't the behavior itself -- the brain tells the muscles to do something or other -- big deal. It's the meaning of the behavior.

In other words, dopamine is not about the happiness of reward. It's about the happiness of pursuit of reward that has a decent chance of occurring.

I think threat of change is pretty potent. In humans, blood pressure doesn't go up when people get laid off: it goes up when they first hear rumors that layoffs are coming at the end of the month.

The problem isn't testosterone and aggression; it's how often we reward aggression. And we do: We give medals to masters of the right kinds of aggression. We preferentially mate with them. We select them as our leaders.

For moral judgment, I think the most interesting trends in neuroscience are the ways in which judgments vary as a function of how emotionally salient the situation is.

Go get yourself stressed all the time and the common cold becomes more common.

We're getting along so well; I trust you so much for this one second that I'm going to let you yank on me.