157 Quotes by Paul Bloom

It has been a period where people have been far nicer to one another in every possible way. I’m not saying it’s because we’re dropping our empathy that we’re nicer to each other, just that the drop doesn’t seem to be causing any harm.

I love teaching. I wouldn’t take a job that didn’t include it.

In my own life, I do not live like an effective altruist. An effective altruist would really disapprove of my life. I don’t give enough to charity and I still have both my kidneys.

As you would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise,” or Rabbi Hillel’s statement, “What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary thereof.

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans – language, rationality, culture, and so on. I’d stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

I have two teenage sons, and they’re both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they’re always on social media.

Moral deliberation has to be somewhere in the brain, after all. It’s not going to be in the foot or the stomach, and it’s certainly not going to reside in some mysterious immaterial realm. So who cares about precisely where?

When you start writing things to try to persuade someone who’s not already part of your guild or your profession that something is interesting, it forces you to ask yourself, “Well, why is this interesting?”

I’m very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.