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
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
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
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
As technology accumulates and people in more parts of the planet become interdependent, the hatred between them tends to decrease, for the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
... people notice differences and expect every difference in form to convey some difference in meaning. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
As individual people, embedded in our daily lives, of course we're interested in what makes one person different from another. We've got… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
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
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
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
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
You know that when Irving puts the dog in the car, it is no longer in the yard. When Edna goes to… — 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
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
