The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books. While I'm… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
You have to remember that not every creature that was evolving left behind its skull or its tools for our convenience tens… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
In many Muslim countries, witchcraft is not only on the books as a crime, but is commonly prosecuted. In 2009, for example,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I spent 20 years doing research on regular and irregular verbs, not because I'm an obsessive language lover but because it seemed… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like… — 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
Solving a problem in a hundred years is, practically speaking, the same as not solving it at all. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity.… — 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
