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
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
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
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
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
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
Thinking is a physical process, the human brain is not exempt from evolution — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I don't think aggression works like thirst or sleep. I think aggression is more elicited by particular situations. I think it can… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think a lot of moral debates are not over what is the basis of justice, but who gets a ticket to… — 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
The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally. — 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
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
In any dispute, each side thinks it's in the right and the other side is demons. — 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
It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that… — 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
If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that's going to expand. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food… — 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
