Steven Pinker Quotes

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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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• Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)

  Steven Pinker

  Thanks, Language, Redundancy

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

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• All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news.

  Steven Pinker

  News, Violence

  "War And Violence On The Decline In Modern Times". Talk of the Nation with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. October 8, 2012.

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• Without goals the very concept of intelligence is meaningless

  Steven Pinker

  Goal, Concepts, Meaningless

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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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• 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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• We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.

  Steven Pinker

  Sound, Visuals, Creatures

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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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• 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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• 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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• Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings.

  Steven Pinker

  Giving, Psychology, Meaning Of Life

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• Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God and was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications and non-sequiturs.

  Steven Pinker

  Character, Biblical, Editing

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.28, Penguin

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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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• Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and their children live longer.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, Intelligent, People

  "This much I know". Interview With Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2008.

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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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• Societies that empower women are less violent in every way.

  Steven Pinker

  Empowering, Way, Empowering Women

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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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• In many Muslim countries, witchcraft is not only on the books as a crime, but is commonly prosecuted. In 2009, for example, Saudi Arabia convicted a man for carrying a phone booklet with characters in an alphabet from his native Eritrea, which the police interpreted as occult symbols. He was lashed three hundred times and imprisoned for more than three years.

  Steven Pinker

  Country, Book, Character

  "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined". Book by Steven Pinker, October 4, 2011.

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• Sex and excretion are reminders that anyone's claim to round-the-clock dignity is tenuous. The so-called rational animal has a desperate drive to pair up and moan and writhe.

  Steven Pinker

  Sex, Fear, Animal

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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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• The world has far too much morality.

  Steven Pinker

  World, Too Much, Morality

  Alan Page Fiske, Tage Shakti Rai, Steven Pinker (2014). “Virtuous Violence”, p.15, Cambridge University Press

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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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• 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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