The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit… — 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
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 costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory… — 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
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
Probably Hobbes got it right when he said that a leviathan, a third party with a monopoly on the use of legitimate… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts… — 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 Image
Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
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 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 learn unless… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
