Steven Pinker Quotes - Page 10

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As individual people, embedded in our daily lives, of course we're interested in what makes one person different from another. We've got to hire one person and not another, marry one person and not another.

Steven Pinker

People, Different, Daily Life

"Basic instincts". Interview with Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. September 22, 2007.

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[Napoleon deployed] every available resource to inflict all-out defeats on [his] enemies.

Steven Pinker

Enemy, Defeat, Resources

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The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.

Steven Pinker

Blow, Oxygen, Knives

Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.64, W. W. Norton & Company

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My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal police went on strike. Within hours, mayhem and rioting broke out and the Mounties had to be called in to restore order. It instilled in me that one's convictions can be subjected to empirical test.

Steven Pinker

Order, Police, Tests

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

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It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.

Steven Pinker

Song, People, Brain

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

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If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important.

Steven Pinker

People, Important, Warfare

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We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.

Steven Pinker

Children, Views, Law

Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.480, Penguin

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For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'sieges' instead of calling them 'genocides.'

Steven Pinker

People, Calling, Care

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We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.

Steven Pinker

Vocabulary, Brain, Events

Steven Pinker (2010). “The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language”, p.1, Harper Collins

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Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity.

Steven Pinker

Climate, Scarcity, Waste

"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. November 10, 2011.

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Astrology had an important role in the ancient world. You can't understand many things unless you know something about astrology - the plays of Shakespeare and so on.

Steven Pinker

Play, Astrology, Important

"Proud atheists". Salon Interview, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.

Steven Pinker

Discovery, Political, Intellectual

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Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.

Steven Pinker

Dream, Selfish, Book

"How the Mind Works". Book by Steven Pinker, 1997.

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Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas.

Steven Pinker

Latin, Writing, Editing

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

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'Capitalism' is a dirty word for many intellectuals, but there are a number of studies showing that open economies and free trade are negatively correlated with genocide and war.

Steven Pinker

War, Dirty, Numbers

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There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal.

Steven Pinker

Art, World, Body

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I don't consider myself to be that radical a thinker.

Steven Pinker

Radical, Thinker

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There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.

Steven Pinker

Mean, Competition, Survival

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Tom Hanks, who starred in 'The Da Vinci Code,' turns out to be related to a number of the historic characters that feature in 'The Da Vinci Code,' including William the Conqueror and Shakespeare.

Steven Pinker

Character, Numbers, Historic

"Surprising Family Trees!". abcnews.go.com. October 18, 2007.

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The reason the United States is not so likely to invade Iran is precisely because of the lessons learned from Iraq. And conversely, the Iranian push towards nuclear capability is calculated to deter invasions like the kind deposing Saddam Husain.

Steven Pinker

Iran, Iraq, Lesson Learned

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When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is shy in personality but flamboyant in his philanthropy.

Steven Pinker

Cities, People, Interesting

"My week" by Steven Pinker, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2007.

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Why is it surprising that scientists might have long hair and wear cowboy boots? In fields like neuroscience, where the events you are recording are so minute, I suspect scientists cultivate a boring, reliable image. A scientist with a reputation for flamboyance might be suspect.

Steven Pinker

Cowboy, Hair, Long

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

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As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

Steven Pinker

Commitment, Equality, People

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You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.

Steven Pinker

Animal, Thinking, Race

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In societies no less than individuals, acknowledging our limitations may ultimately be more humane than denying them.

Steven Pinker

May, Individual, Humane

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Born: September 18, 1954
Occupation: Psychologist
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