Steven Pinker quotes - page 5

One of the perks of being a psychologist is access to tools that allow you to carry out the injunction to know thyself. (Steven Pinker)
No one knows what the nongenetic causes of individuality are. Perhaps people are shaped by modifications of genes that take place after conception, or by haphazard fluctuations in the chemical soup in the womb or the wiring up of the brain or the expression of the genes themselves. View quote
Steven Pinker
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration. View quote
Steven Pinker
I like ice hockey. No one is ever going to ask me to write about that as a metaphor for life. View quote
Steven Pinker
Pre-state societies were far more violent than our own. View quote
Steven Pinker
If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important. View quote
Steven Pinker
If you aren't just brought up in your tribe but interact with other people either directly or vicariously, through journalism and literature, you see what life is like from other points of view and are less likely to demonize them or dehumanize others and more likely to empathize with them. View quote
Steven Pinker
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 left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics. View quote
Steven Pinker
You wouldn't believe the kind of hate mail I get about my work on irregular verbs. View quote
Steven Pinker
I try to jog in every city I visit, and I particularly enjoy harbour-front paths that let me ogle big ships, railroad bridges and the ruins of factories and warehouses. View quote
Steven Pinker
When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is shy in personality but flamboyant in his philanthropy. (Steven Pinker)
Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance. View quote
Steven Pinker
An enormous amount of scientific language is metaphorical. We talk about a genetic code, where code originally meant a cipher; we talk about the solar system model of the atom as though the atom were like a sun and moon and planets. View quote
Steven Pinker
I get drawn in when I feel there is something deep and mysterious going on beneath the surface of something. View quote
Steven Pinker
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 centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual. View quote
Steven Pinker
A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing has gone wrong yet' without looking for wood to knock? View quote
Steven Pinker
Violent movements attract thugs and firebrands who enjoy the mayhem. Violent tactics provide a pretext for retaliation by the enemy and alienate third parties who might otherwise support the movement. View quote
Steven Pinker
All of the violence that doesn't occur doesn't get reported on the news. View quote
Steven Pinker
People know there is a difference between what you do and what you accept. There is a difference between me knowing that people swear, me hearing people swear and me swearing, and everyone accepting that this is something you can do as much as you like. View quote
Steven Pinker
In societies no less than individuals, acknowledging our limitations may ultimately be more humane than denying them. View quote
Steven Pinker
Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. (Steven Pinker)
We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust. View quote
Steven Pinker
We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives. View quote
Steven Pinker
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture. View quote
Steven Pinker
Paris Hilton, it turns out, is related to fellow celebrity jailbirds Zsa Zsa Gabor and G. Gordon Liddy. View quote
Steven Pinker