Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Oscar Wilde’s prophecy that “as long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Knights do protect ladies, but only to keep them from being abducted by other knights.” — 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
“The psychological components of war have not gone away—dominance, vengeance, callousness, tribalism, groupthink, self-deception” — 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
Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Violence between the combatants may be called war; violence by the bystander against the combatants may be called law. The Leviathan theory,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Instead of asking, “Why is there war?” we might ask, “Why is there peace?” We can obsess not just over what we… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“Matthew White, a self-described atrocitologist who keeps a database with the estimated death tolls of history’s major wars, massacres, and genocides, counts… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“One of the tragic ironies of the second half of the 20th century is that when colonies in the developing world freed… — 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
“Hobbes's analysis of the causes of violence, borne out by modern data on crime and war, shows that violence is not a… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“This so-called culture war, I suspect, is the product of a history in which white America took two different paths to civilization.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism)… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“During a famine, the father and stepmother of Hansel and Gretel abandon them in a forest so that they will starve to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“As one becomes aware of the decline of violence, the world begins to look different. The past seems less innocent; the present… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
'Capitalism' is a dirty word for many intellectuals, but there are a number of studies showing that open economies and free trade… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology… — 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
Dominance in an adaptation to anarchy and it serves no purpose in a society that has undergone a civilising process or in… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Capitalism saved the world, and there is even a heretical theory now, moving up from the level of individuals to countries: countries… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second… — 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
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
