All Steven Pinker Quotes
- Working out what it would take to program goodness into a robot shows not only how much machinery it takes to be good but how… Concept
- Unfortunately, creative people are at their most creative when writing their autobiographies. Autobiographies
- Humans are so innately hardwired for language that they can no more suppress their ability to learn and use language than they can suppress the… Ability
- In the speech sound wave, one word runs into the next seamlessly; there are no little silences between spoken words the way there are white… Boundaries
- For example, parents who talk a lot to their children have kids with better language skills, parents who spank have children who grow up to… Adjusted
- It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig… Advantage
- If people are innately saddled with certain sins and flaws, like selfishness, prejudice, sort-sightedness, and self-deception, then political reform would seem to be a waste… Certain
- It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But in tribal violence, the clashes… Battle
- It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the… Ability
- Jews are known for many things, but strength, swiftness, and agility are not among them. There is one trait, as controversial as it is familiar,… Agility
- Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for… Bases
- Look at almost any passage, and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the speaker is trying… Any
- My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries. Back Centuries
- My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal police went on strike. Within hours, mayhem and rioting broke out and the Mounties had… Anarchistic
- When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner of vagueness and… All
- Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control. Complex
- Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature. Art
- Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture. Bringing
- I think a lot of moral debates are not over what is the basis of justice, but who gets a ticket to play in the… Bases
- I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift. Argue