Quote

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

Paul Bloom

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Bloom
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 24
Psychologist
University Teacher
Montreal
Quebec
Love
Values
Empathize
Future
Strangers
Fact
Distant
Hope
Appreciation
Lives
Stranger
Facts
Lies
Best
Value
Even
Lying

More quotes by Paul Bloom

Image
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
Image
This enthusiasm [for empathy] may be misplaced. 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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks much better than anyone else thinks that they do.
Paul Bloom
Image
I think empathy is really important for pleasure.
Paul Bloom
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy.
Paul Bloom
Image
My brother is severely autistic, so when I was a kid I spent a lot of time as a teenager in camps and programs for autistic kids. When I went to McGill as an undergraduate, I figured I'd be a therapist working with these kids. The truth is, and I knew this even back then, I'm just not good at this. I'm too empathic to do this sort of thing.
Paul Bloom
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats.
Paul Bloom
Image
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
Image
Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.
Paul Bloom
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.
Paul Bloom