Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Paul Bloom, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Paul Bloom quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 97 Paul Bloom quotes for you to read and share.

Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000015804
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?" -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000030081
Relying on the face might be human nature - even babies prefer to look at attractive people. But, of course, judging someone based on the geometry of his features is, from a moral and legal standpoint, no better than judging him based on the color of his skin. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000060786
The genetic you and the neural you aren't alternatives to the conscious you. They are its foundations. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000070190
Humans are born with a hard-wired morality: a sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. I know this claim might sound outlandish, but it's supported now by research in several laboratories. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000105424
Strong moral arguments exist for why we should often try to ignore stereotypes or override them. But we shouldn't assume they represent some irrational quirk of the unconscious mind. In fact, they're largely the consequence of the mind's attempt to make a rational decision. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000155309
Any simple claim that you need religion to be good is flat wrong. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000187470
A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000187494
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? -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000187506
Modern science tells us that the conscious self arises from a purely physical brain. We do not have immaterial souls. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000231967
By "empathy," some people mean everything that is good - compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world - and I'm for all of those things. I'm not a monster. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000258290
Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000280479
Some scholars argue that although the brain might contain neural subsystems, or modules, specialized for tasks like recognizing faces and understanding language, it also contains a part that constitutes a person, a self: the chief executive of all the subsystems. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000281492
When I write I'll sometimes say things which are somewhat controversial - not because I'm seeking out controversy for its own sake, but if I don't have anything to say which is different, why am I bothering to write stuff down in the first place? -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000283719
I have two teenage sons, and they're both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they're always on social media. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000287287
I have huge admiration for people who think like the effective altruist, who try to rationally think about how they can change the world for the better, and who try not to be swayed by irrational considerations, such as skin color or whether or not someone lives in the same neighborhood. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000297739
Families survive the Terrible Twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons. A 2-year-old with the physical capacities of an adult would be terrifying. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000303685
We know that young babies, as they become capable of moving voluntarily, will share. They will share food, for instance, with their siblings and with kids that are around. They will sooth. If they see somebody else in pain, even the youngest of toddlers will try to reach out and pat the person. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000356708
I don't doubt that the explanation for consciousness will arise from the mercilessly scientific account of psychology and neuroscience, but, still, isn't it neat that the universe is such that it gave rise to conscious beings like you and me? -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000367663
Here's how to freak out a baby: sit across from the baby, engage with him or her, and then suddenly become still. If this goes on for more than a few seconds, with you looking all corpselike, the baby will become upset. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000374518
Imagination tends to be truly useful if accompanied by the power of mental control - if the worlds in one's head can be purposefully manipulated and distinguished from the real one outside it. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000399078
We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods. The key to the happy life, it seems, is the good life: a life with sustained relationships, challenging work, and connections to community. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000433558
Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000433576
I think there's some evidence that we're empathic by nature. There is some evidence from studies of babies and young children that they resonate with the pain of others, and there's some work by Frans de Waal that other primates also resonate with the pain of others. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000433579
I think we should really discourage this sort of empathic engagement when it comes to making moral decisions. I think we should focus on something like compassion, on getting people to care more for others without putting ourselves in their shoes. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000435457
It's really difficult working with kids and with babies because they are not cooperative subjects: they are not socialized into the idea that they should cheerfully and cooperatively give you information. They're not like undergraduates, who you can bribe with beer money or course credit. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000468265
Periods of cooperation between political parties shouldn't be taken for granted; they are a stunning human achievement. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000476142
You might argue on utilitarian grounds that the best way for the world to work is for everybody to take care of themselves first. And people have made that argument. But I just think we would be so much better off if we could care for distant others even a little bit more. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000511767
More-radical scholars insist that an inherent clash exists between science and our long-held conceptions about consciousness and moral agency: if you accept that our brains are a myriad of smaller components, you must reject such notions as character, praise, blame, and free will. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000522924
In politics and in society, we can use our reason to rise above our parochial natures. Too bad that our elected officials don't choose to do so more often. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000558321
If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well - better, in many ways, than devout ones. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000560726
The real problem with natural selection is that it makes no intuitive sense. It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right to us. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000587946
If our moral attitudes are entirely the result of nonrational factors, such as gut feelings and the absorption of cultural norms, they should either be stable or randomly drift over time, like skirt lengths or the widths of ties. They shouldn't show systematic change over human history. But they do. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000593619
One way to make a baby cry is to expose it to cries of other babies. There's sort of contagiousness to the crying. It's not just crying. We also know that if a baby sees another human in silent pain, it will distress the baby. It seems part of our very nature is to suffer at the suffering of others. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000594317
I think what a lot of fiction is, is the imagining of the worst so as to prepare ourselves. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000616887
What I mean by "empathy" is putting yourself in other people's shoes, feeling what they feel. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000631257
If evil is empathy erosion, and empathy erosion is a form of illness, then evil turns out to be nothing more than a particularly awful psychological disorder. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000633151
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. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000636821
Enjoying fiction requires a shift in selfhood. You give up your own identity and try on the identities of other people, adopting their perspectives so as to share their experiences. This allows us to enjoy fictional events that would shock and sadden us in real life. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000689943
Every president, Democratic or Republican, simply works on the supposition that it's better to keep jobs in America than let them go to Mexico. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000694456
Some people think that without that spark of empathy we would do nothing, but that's just flat-out wrong. You could feel compassion for somebody without the spark of empathy. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000788699
When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000802507
On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000804686
the egalitarian lifestyles of hunter-gatherers exist because the individuals care a lot about status. Individuals in these societies end up roughly equal because everyone is struggling to ensure that nobody gets too much power over him or her. This is invisible-hand egalitarianism. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000826427
Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000837503
People differ in where they direct their empathy and their compassion. Many people are intensely concerned about the suffering of non-human animals, and some do not care at all. There are cultural differences. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000854207
Imagination is Reality Lite - a useful substitute when the real pleasure is inaccessible, too risky, or too much work. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000872940
If our wondrous kindness is evidence for God, is our capacity for great evil proof of the Devil? -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000896809
If Inigo Montoya were around now, he wouldn't need to storm the castle to bring his father's murderer to justice; the police would do it for him, and fewer people would have to die. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000900074
We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000908390
The emotions triggered by fiction are very real. When Charles Dickens wrote about the death of Little Nell in the 1840s, people wept - and I'm sure that the death of characters in J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' series led to similar tears. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000915716
For instance, most everyone agrees that a just society promotes equality among its citizens, but blood is spilled over what sort of equality is morally preferable: equality of opportunity or equality of outcome -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000924226
And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000943036
I have my own difficulty with movies in which the suffering of the characters is too real, and many find it difficult to watch comedies that rely too heavily on embarrassment; the vicarious reaction to this is too unpleasant. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000956459
I'm not a pacifist. I think the suffering of innocent people can be a catalyst for moral action. But empathy puts too much weight on the scale in favor of war. Empathy can really lead to violence. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000956956
Marsh recounts an anecdote about a psychopath who was being tested with a series of pictures and who failed over and over again to recognize fearful expressions, until finally she figured it out: "That's the look people get right before I stab them. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000960882
Empathy has some unfortunate features - it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 000992572
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. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001073817
I draw a lot from Buddhism, which focuses on compassion and kindness, loving kindness, as they call it, but rejects empathy because it's a poor moral guide. And I think there's a lot of evidence suggesting that they're right. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001082463
Being a good person likely is more related to distanced feelings of compassion and kindness, along with intelligence, self-control, and a sense of justice. Being a bad person has more to do with a lack of regard for others and an inability to control one's appetites. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001102405
A sympathetic parent might see the spark of consciousness in a baby's large eyes and eagerly accept the popular claim that babies are wonderful learners, but it is hard to avoid the impression that they begin as ignorant as bread loaves. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001104888
Morality is often seen as an innovation, like agriculture and writing. From this perspective, babies are pint-sized psychopaths, self-interested beings who need to be taught moral notions such as the wrongness of harming another person. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001120350
The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight. There may be good arguments against gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and human cloning, but the fact that some people find such acts to be disgusting should carry no weight. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001121312
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. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001166693
Something as important and central and encompassing as empathy can't be all bad. I think empathy plays a role in intimate relationships, where you might want your partner not just to care about you or understand you but to feel what you feel. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001193279
I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001240971
Perhaps looking out through big baby eyes - if we could - would not be as revelatory experience as many imagine. We might see a world inhabited by objects and people, a world infused with causation, agency, and morality - a world that would surprise us not by its freshness but by its familiarity. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001243334
We'd be really screwed if we had to start our life over again as children with our brains right now, because I think we lose the plasticity and flexibility. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001260815
Because of empathy, stories of the suffering of one person could lead us into a war that could kill millions of people. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001322801
The idea I'll explore is that the act of feeling what you think others are feeling - whatever one chooses to call this - is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we're better off without it. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001330536
I think if we could turn the dial a bit, and try to take what the philosopher Henry Sidgwick called "the point of view of the universe", and look from above, and realize that we are not special, none of us are, I think it would just cause a transformation. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001337633
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. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001338043
(...) life just creeps along, with long spans where nothing much happens... Stories solve this problem - as the critic Clive James once put it, 'Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.' This is one reason why Friends is more interesting than your friends. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001338306
Part of the satisfaction of tattling surely comes from showing oneself to adults as a good moral agent, a responsible being who is sensitive to right and wrong. But I would bet that children would tattle even if they could do so only anonymously. They would do it just to have justice done. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001392117
And it isn't a mistake in taste, like believing that the Matrix sequels were as good as the original. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001432968
I think Americans are always going to care more about Americans than about Mexicans. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001435680
I love teaching. I wouldn't take a job that didn't include it. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001437981
I think empathy can serve as a moral spark, motivating us to do good things. But anything can be a moral spark. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001469922
I am never going to write about dogs again. You can write about Islam, you can write about sexuality, but no, not dogs. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001477977
Most of us know nothing about constitutional law, so it's hardly surprising that we take sides in the Obamacare debate the way we root for the Red Sox or the Yankees. Loyalty to the team is what matters. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001488816
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001491457
Even the charities I give to are related to things that touch my life, like the Special Olympics. I'm not fully rational; I'm swayed by my biases and my emotions. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001500982
It's hard to pull apart empathy from compassion. What is really clear is that we innately care for other people at least to some extent. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001503578
Almost nobody believes anymore that infants are insensate blobs. It seems both mad and evil to deny experience and feeling to a laughing, gurgling creature. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001529219
That something can be used for good isn't necessarily a knockdown argument for it. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001559391
Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001566186
The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001566768
Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001570102
I'm really interested in the pleasure we get from stories and the pleasure we get from movies, and certainly the pleasure we get from virtual experiences. My complaint is against empathy as a moral guide. But as a source of pleasure, it can't be beat. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001582072
I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001631120
Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001639765
I think empathy is really important for pleasure. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001674410
It would be nice if everybody who had something interesting to say about my work could say it politely and civilly, but it doesn't work that way ... Sometimes people are just really nasty. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001692192
I kind of like social media, and I like hearing from people. I don't like the ugly stuff, but there are some people - smart people - who have a very different perspective, and I'll get a backlash from them. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001734661
Empty heads, cognitive science has taught us, learn nothing. The powerful cultural and personal flexibility of our species is owed at least in part to our starting off so well-informed; we are good learners because we know what to pay attention to and what questions are the right ones to ask. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001795371
Because of empathy, we care more for, and devote far more resources to, someone who is familiar, from our country or our group, than a stranger. -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001859889
Nobody uses email anymore. I'm this old fogie with my email. I don't know what I'm supposed to communicate with now - SnapChat? -- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom Quotes : pic 001876552
We can imagine our bodies being destroyed, our brains ceasing to function, our bones turning to dust, but it is harder - some would say impossible - to imagine the end of our very existence. -- Paul Bloom