Steven Pinker Quotes

248 quotes in 3829 categories

• What a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or…
• Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.
• It begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.
• Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.
• As technology accumulates and people in more parts of the planet become interdependent, the hatred between them tends to decrease, for the simple reason that…
• When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To…
• My laptop has freed me to travel.
• We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable,…
• Dominance in an adaptation to anarchy and it serves no purpose in a society that has undergone a civilising process or in an international system…
• Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense…
• Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character…
• In many Muslim countries, witchcraft is not only on the books as a crime, but is commonly prosecuted. In 2009, for example, Saudi Arabia convicted…
• In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and…
• We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.
• 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 for…
• You know that when Irving puts the dog in the car, it is no longer in the yard. When Edna goes to church, her head…
• The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the satisfying…
• Evolutionarily speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek — why, for example, people would rather make love with…
• The stuff of life turned out to be not a quivering, glowing, wondrous gel but a contraption of tiny jigs, springs, hinges, rods, sheets, magnets,…
• Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.

Browse Steven Pinker Quotes by Category