All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
There is a correlation between economic inequality and personal violence. The explanation for the correlation isn't completely clear; there are a number… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“States are far less violent than traditional bands and tribes. Modern Western countries, even in their most war-torn centuries, suffered no more… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives… — 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
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you… — 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
Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with. — 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
It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But in tribal… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
There's a common criticism of evolutionary psychology that it's fatalistic and it dooms us to eternal strife, 'Why even try to work… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“A society is an organic system that develops spontaneously, governed by myriad interactions and adjustments that no human mind can pretend to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The violence of a lower-class man may indeed express rage, but it is aimed not at society but at the asshole who… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Organisms are selected to deploy violence only in circumstances where the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs.” — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The 21st century has certainly seen the rape of women in wartime, but it has long been treated as an atrocious war… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“God, who is omnipotent, could have softened Pharaoh’s heart, but he hardens it instead, which gives him a reason to afflict every… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The one great universal in the study of violence is that most of it is committed by fifteen-to-thirty-year-old men.” — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The researchers argued that an orderly environment fosters a sense of responsibility not so much by deterrence (since Groningen police rarely penalize… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“So holding many factors constant, we find that living in a civilization reduces one’s chances of being a victim of violence fivefold.” — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control. — 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
