About Quotes by Alison Gopnik

8 About quotes by Alison Gopnik

Alison Gopnik offers a concise collection of thoughts that explore how children learn, explore, and make sense of the world. The brief set provides a clear glimpse into her developmental perspective.

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I wanted to answer big questions about humanity, about how it is that we understand about the world, how we can know…

Alison Gopnik

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Many philosophers say it's impossible to explain our conscious experience in scientific, biological terms at all. But that's not exactly true. Scientists…

Alison Gopnik

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For better or worse, we live in possible worlds as much as actual ones. We are cursed by that characteristically human guilt…

Alison Gopnik

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Samuel Johnson called it the vanity of human wishes, and Buddhists talk about the endless cycle of desire. Social psychologists say we…

Alison Gopnik

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I've had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation…

Alison Gopnik

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What we want in students is creativity and a willingness to fail. I always say to students, 'If you've never at some…

Alison Gopnik

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I think universities are trying to figure out how we could use what we know about learning to change our education system,…

Alison Gopnik

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Imagine if baseball were taught the way science is taught in most inner-city schools. Schoolchildren would get lectures about the history of…

Alison Gopnik

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More by Alison Gopnik

Philosophers and psychologists have long puzzled over the question of how we know as much as we do despite our limited experiences. One way…

Alison Gopnik

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Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more…

Alison Gopnik

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Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!

Alison Gopnik

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From an evolutionary perspective children are, literally, designed to learn. Childhood is a special period of protected immaturity. It gives the young breathing time…

Alison Gopnik

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We don't wife our husbands and we don't child our parents.

Alison Gopnik

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There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their…

Alison Gopnik

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“Instead, it may be that experience itself has changed our brains so that we perceive and interpret the world in a certain way. Once…

Alison Gopnik

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Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard…

Alison Gopnik

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Imaginary friends are one of the weirder forms of pretend play in childhood. But the research shows that imaginary friends actually help children understand…

Alison Gopnik

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“Like their parents, the Korean children used more verbs than the English-speaking kids, while the English-speaking kids used more nouns. But in addition, the…

Alison Gopnik

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“We decided to become development psychologists and study children because there aren't any Martians. These brilliant beings with the little bodies and big heads…

Alison Gopnik

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Each new generation of children grows up in the new environment its parents have created, and each generation of brains becomes wired in a…

Alison Gopnik

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I'm the oldest of six children and I had my own first baby when I was 23. So I've always been interested in babies,…

Alison Gopnik

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“‎Literature is the equivalent of the climate scientist’s computer simulations: set up some new starting conditions, run the whole complicated process and see what…

Alison Gopnik

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The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to…

Alison Gopnik

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