No one knows what the nongenetic causes of individuality are. Perhaps people are shaped by modifications of genes that take place after… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic:… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I have never been a fan of science fiction. For me, fiction has to explore the combinatorial possibilities of people interacting under… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought. This language of thought probably… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
If you aren't just brought up in your tribe but interact with other people either directly or vicariously, through journalism and literature,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Since the point of erotica is to offer the consumer sexual experiences without having to compromise with the demands of the other… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture , melody in music , meter and rhyme in poetry ,… — 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
People know there is a difference between what you do and what you accept. There is a difference between me knowing that… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine… — 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
