Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“And ideology is a shared belief system, usually involving a vision of utopia, that justifies unlimited violence in pursuit of unlimited good.” — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The decline of violence isn't a steady inclined plane from an original state of maximal and universal bloodshed. Technology, ideology, and social… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years, because it was built into its ideology… — 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
“I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism)… — 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
