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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• 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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• 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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• Evolutionarily speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek — why, for example, people would rather make love with an attractive partner than get a slap on the belly with a wet fish.

  Steven Pinker

  People, Goal, Making Love

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.143, W. W. Norton & Company

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Obviously no language is innate. Take any kid from any race, bring them up in any culture and they will learn the language equally quickly. So no particular language is in the genes. But what might be in the genes is the ability to acquire language.

  Steven Pinker

  Kids, Race, Culture

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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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• Commerce is a noble profession, and Jews should get over any self-hatred they might harbor from contemplating the capitalist spirit of diaspora Judaism.

  Steven Pinker

  Self, Hatred, Noble

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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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• 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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• 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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• For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.

  Steven Pinker

  Civilization, Accomplishment, Enlightenment

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.737, Penguin

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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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• When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, War, Thinking

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.14, Penguin

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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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• 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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• In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints ... and gods.

  Steven Pinker

  Believe, People, Soul

  Steven Pinker (2003). “How the Mind Works”, p.494, Penguin UK

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• Without goals the very concept of intelligence is meaningless

  Steven Pinker

  Goal, Concepts, Meaningless

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• Terrorist bombings, like rampage shootings, are events that maximize the amount of publicity per amount of damage. That's why people do them, because they know they will set off a media frenzy.

  Steven Pinker

  Media, People, Events

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• In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics - unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times!

  Steven Pinker

  School, College, Intuition

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