All Steven Pinker Quotes
- People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time. Dictionaries
- Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world. Create
- Pre-state societies were far more violent than our own. Far
- Racism, because it favors color over talent, is bad for business. Bad
- Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance. Bound
- Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that's going to expand. Book
- Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with. Changes
- The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn't all that high. All
- The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer. All
- The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind. Bag
- The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero. Appeal
- The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing. Another Living
- The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally. Business
- There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization. Acquires
- Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries. Backward
- We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade. Creatures
- We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust. Bloodlust
- We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives. Biologically
- We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable? Dry
- Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage? Baggage