Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
It begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Thinking is a physical process, the human brain is not exempt from evolution — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Aggression, like every other part of human behavior we take for granted, is a challenging engineering problem! — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Humans are so innately hardwired for language that they can no more suppress their ability to learn and use language than they… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to… — 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
After their return from Babylon, the practice of human sacrifice died out among the Jews, but survived as an ideal in one… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to… — 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
Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its… — 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
The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
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… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The… — 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
When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner… — 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
