Steven Pinker Quotes - Page 2

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Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.

Steven Pinker

Democracy, Way, Anarchy

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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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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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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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Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.

Steven Pinker

Toxins, Warfare, Want

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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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Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about human nature is not. Eliminating discrimination against women is important, but believing that women and men are born with indistinguishable minds is not. Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast male conspiracy is not.

Steven Pinker

Believe, Men, Choices

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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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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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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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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 reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong level of analysis. You have to look at a higher level of organization.

Steven Pinker

Thinking, Organization, Brain

"Proud atheists". Interview with Steve Paulson, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

Steven Pinker

Humanity, Overcoming, Calling

"Time Magazine's 'Evolution Wars' Features Albert Mohler". www.christianpost.com. August 10, 2005.

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I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew.

Steven Pinker

Atheism, Serious, Jew

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

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The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs.

Steven Pinker

Thinking, People, Privilege

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We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The human lust for power and esteem, coupled with its vulnerability to self-deception and self-righteousness, makes that an invitation to a calamity, all the worse when the power is directed at a goal as quixotic as eradicating human self-interest.

Steven Pinker

Mean, Self, Practice

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Dear White Fella When I am born I’m black When I grow up I’m black When I am sick I’m black When I go out ina sun I’m black When I git cold I’m black When I git scared I’m black And when I die I’m still black. But you white fella When you’re born you’re pink When you grow up you’re white When you git sick you’re green When you go out ina sun you go red When you git cold you go blue When you git scared you’re yellow And when you die you’re grey And you got the cheek to call me coloured?

Steven Pinker

Growing Up, Yellow, White

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The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.

Steven Pinker

People, Childhood, Trying

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Racism, because it favors color over talent, is bad for business.

Steven Pinker

Color, Racism, Favors

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The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

Steven Pinker

Zero, Simple, Mind

"A biological understanding of human nature". Edge Interview, www.edge.org. September 8, 2002.

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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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In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award for accomplishing with pinpoint precision and unerring reliability, the feat of sitting exactly where it is sitting. Nothing would prevent us from agreeing with the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn that rocks are smarter than cats because rocks have the sense to go away when you kick them.

Steven Pinker

Cat, Awards, Rocks

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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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If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called 'pure evil' because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable.

Steven Pinker

Believe, Evil, Moral

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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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Born: September 18, 1954
Occupation: Psychologist
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