In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard. Obviously,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
In the 1970s, many intellectuals had become political radicals. Marxism was correct, liberalism was for wimps, and Marx had pronounced that 'the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate. — 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
“In hermetic isolation, all kinds of bizarre and toxic ideas can fester. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and exposing a bad idea… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity.… — 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
