People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Evolutionarily speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek — why, for example, people would rather… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
If people are innately saddled with certain sins and flaws, like selfishness, prejudice, sort-sightedness, and self-deception, then political reform would seem to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think that if you were to probe a lot of people's religious opinions, they would not be as religious as the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Something about the topic of consciousness makes people, like the White Queen in Through The Looking Glass, believe six impossible things before… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Knowing there is a world that will outlive you, there are people whose well-being depends on how you live your life, affects… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
One of the things that people complain about is loneliness, disconnectedness. If you live in a society where your life is rarely… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or… — 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
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 indispensability of reason does not imply that individual people are always rational or are unswayed by passion and illusion. It only… — 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… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that “animals try to spread their genes.” That misstates the facts… — 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
Terrorist bombings, like rampage shootings, are events that maximize the amount of publicity per amount of damage. That's why people do them,… — 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
Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorised the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods, and the murder of… — 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
The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Language surely does affect our thoughts, rather than just labeling them for the sake of labeling them. Most obviously, language is the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think the reason that swearing is both so offensive and so attractive is that it is a way to push people's… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The fact that people can forget these simple truths when intellectualizing about children shows how far modern doctrines have taken us. They… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
