Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue, 'No,' because it's an oblate spheroid. 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
Morality, then, is not a set of arbitrary regulations dictated by a vengeful deity and written down in a book; nor is… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an… — 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
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
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
We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Though knowledge itself increasingly ignores boundaries between fields, professors are apt to organize their pedagogy around the methods and history of their… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world. — 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
Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up… — 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
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
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
There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Nature is a hanging judge," goes an old saying. Many tragedies come from our physical and cognitive makeup. Our bodies are extraordinarily… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to… — 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
Astrology had an important role in the ancient world. You can't understand many things unless you know something about astrology - the… — 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
