Steven Pinker Quotes

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Steven Pinker

Thanks, Language, Redundancy

Steven Pinker (1994). “The Language Instinct”, William Morrow & Company

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I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Steven Pinker

Giving, Purpose, Realization

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All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.

Steven Pinker

Believe, Psychology, Magic

"Steven Pinker: The evolutionary man". Interview with John Crace, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2008.

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Without goals the very concept of intelligence is meaningless

Steven Pinker

Goal, Concepts, Meaningless

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We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one.

Steven Pinker

Perfect, World, A Perfect World

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Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

Steven Pinker

Reading, Technology, Perspective

Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.203, Penguin

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Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist.

Steven Pinker

Psychology, Mind, Woven

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Societies that empower women are less violent in every way.

Steven Pinker

Empowering, Way, Empowering Women

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Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

Steven Pinker

Baby, Reading, Different

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Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

Steven Pinker

Faith, Believe, People

"Brilliant Father Teaches His Children to Argue With Him Using Ancient Greek Rhetoric". rebrn.com. May 29, 2009.

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In our society, the best predictor of a man's wealth is his wife's looks, and the best predictor of a woman's looks is her husband's wealth.

Steven Pinker

Husband, Men, Wife

Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.482, W. W. Norton & Company

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Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.

Steven Pinker

Memories, Psychology, Mind

"Steven Pinker: fighting talk from the prophet of peace". Interview with John Naughton, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2011.

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Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology.

Steven Pinker

Revenge, War, Water

"Steven Pinker: 'Artists used to gush about the beauty of war. The First World War put an end to that'". Interview with Clint Witchalls, www.independent.co.uk. 10 November, 2011.

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We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable?

Steven Pinker

Heaven, Fleas, Dry

"Steven Pinker: the mind reader". www.theguardian.com. November 5, 1999.

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Morality comes from a commitment to treat other as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe.

Steven Pinker

Commitment, Wish, Realization

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It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

Steven Pinker

Science, Thinking, Humanity

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But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones.

Steven Pinker

Meaningful, Struggle, Believe

"Q&A: Steven Pinker of 'Blank Slate'". Interview with Steve Sailer, www.upi.com. October 30, 2002.

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Knowing there is a world that will outlive you, there are people whose well-being depends on how you live your life, affects the way you live your life, whether or not you directly experience those effects. You want to be the kind of person who has the larger view, who takes other people's interests into account, who's dedicated to the principles that you can justify, like justice, knowledge, truth, beauty and morality.

Steven Pinker

Atheist, Knowing, Views

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What a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or confound our common sense. A century ago no one foresaw the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, oceans on Jupiter's moons, or DNA. What could be more enriching than to know that we share a common origin with all living things, that we are kin to chimpanzees, redwoods and mollusks? And isn't it a source of wonder to realize that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were created in the bellies of supernovas?

Steven Pinker

Ocean, Moon, Dna

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Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.

Steven Pinker

Average, Principles, Groups

Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.449, Penguin

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The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.

Steven Pinker

Children, Ideas, Achievement

"Steven Pinker: The evolutionary man". Interview with John Crace, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2008.

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The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit the facts of history.

Steven Pinker

Religious, Allies, Doe

Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.717, Penguin

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After their return from Babylon, the practice of human sacrifice died out among the Jews, but survived as an ideal in one of its break-away sects, which believed that God accepted the torture-sacrifice of an innocent man in exchange for not visiting a worse fate on the rest of humanity. The sect is called Christianity.

Steven Pinker

Fate, Sacrifice, Men

Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes”, p.205, Penguin UK

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I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties.

Steven Pinker

Sensitive, Cheesecake, Spots

Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.534, W. W. Norton & Company

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The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence…the gradual replacement of lives for souls as the locus of moral value was helped along by the ascendency of skepticism and reason

Steven Pinker

Uplifting, People, Soul

Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.170, Penguin

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Born: September 18, 1954
Occupation: Psychologist
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