“No society can be simultaneously fair, free, and equal. If it is fair, people who work harder can accumulate more. If it… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
For example, parents who talk a lot to their children have kids with better language skills, parents who spank have children who… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
As a graduate student, I wrote a long paper connecting the dots between mathematical models of learning and language development in children.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“the written word is a recent invention that has left no trace in our genome and must be laboriously acquired throughout childhood… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The fact that people can forget these simple truths when intellectualizing about children shows how far modern doctrines have taken us. They… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Positive legacy of the 1960s was the revolutions in civil rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, and gay rights, which began to consolidate… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The Rights Revolutions too have given us ideals that educated people today take for granted but that are virtually unprecedented in human… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Most people, of course, are not so lacking in self-control that they ever lash out in violence. But among the nonviolent majority… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The universality of reason is a momentous realization, because it defines a place for morality. If I appeal to you do do… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Indeed, children thrown together in a community that doesn't have a language of its own will invent one in order to communicate… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested - to show that our love for children, compassion… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content. — Steven Pinker Copy Share
The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
I've never argued that humans are massively hot-wired. What I was trying to point out was that you can't understand how we learn unless… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“The biblical story of the binding of Isaac shows that human sacrifice was far from unthinkable in the 1st millennium BCE. The Israelites boasted… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
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… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“The obvious cure for the tragic shortcomings of human intuition in a high-tech world is education. And this offers priorities for educational policy: to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“In some eras, self-control defines the paragon of a decent person: a grown-up, a person of dignity, a lady or a gentleman, a mensch.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
