« All All Quotes · Steven Pinker's Page
All Quotes by Steven Pinker
- The indispensability of reason does not imply that individual people are always rational or are unswayed by passion and illusion. It only means that people…
- People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought. This language of thought probably looks a bit…
- When a scientist considers all high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations. The very…
- Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about human nature is…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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,…
- 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…
- For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we…
- All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news.
- All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.
- By all measures men are the more violent gender.
- 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.
- The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer.
- As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other…
- Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the…
- So no, it's not all in the genes, but what isn't in the genes isn't in the family environment either. It can't be explained in…
- The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the…
- Solving a problem in a hundred years is, practically speaking, the same as not solving it at all.
- Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone…
More All Quotes
- . . . a basic law: the more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for.… — Norman Vincent Peale
- Whenever my pocket money fall short. I start to think my life sucks. Then I think about all those out there who… — Anurag Prakash Ray
- All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. — Aristotle
- Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are… — Aristotle
- Don't be selfish and tell me why you're unfollowing me so I can retweet it for the rest and we all can… — Nikhil Saluja
- No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has… — Hannah Arendt
- Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life. — Aristophanes
- Throughout all of this confusion, I hope I somehow get to you. I practice all the things I'd say to tell you… — Superman