Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.

You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.

For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior.

Sin, also for those who don't have faith, exists when one goes against one's conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.