Alison Gopnik quotes - page 2

Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society. (Alison Gopnik)
Owning our past allows us to own our future. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic! View quote
Alison Gopnik
Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Some people say that parents don't matter, and that's not true at all. The irony is that we pay attention to all these things that don't matter, and not to what does matter, such as parents having enough resources to provide an environment where their children have both security and freedom. View quote
Alison Gopnik
The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything. View quote
Alison Gopnik
The more obsessively we focus on what a particular food is going to do for us, the less healthy we've become. Simple pleasures become complicated. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Putting together philosophy and children would have been difficult for most of history. But very fortunately for me, when I started graduate school there was a real scientific revolution taking place in developmental psychology. (Alison Gopnik)
Children have a very good idea of how to distinguish between fantasies and realities. It's just they are equally interested in exploring both. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb. View quote
Alison Gopnik
A theory not only explains the world we see, it lets us imagine other worlds, and, even more significantly, lets us act to create those worlds. Developing everyday theories, like scientific theories, has allowed human beings to change the world. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Overall, female scientists have fewer resources than male scientists, just as poor people have less access to health care. But if you compare male and female scientists with identical resources, you find that the women are just as likely to be successful. View quote
Alison Gopnik
I've had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Historically, absolute IQ scores have risen substantially as we've changed our environment so that more people go to school longer. View quote
Alison Gopnik
The ancient media of speech and song and theater were radically reshaped by writing, though they were never entirely supplanted, a comfort perhaps to those of us who still thrill to the smell of a library. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Asking questions is what brains were born to do, at least when we were young children. For young children, quite literally, seeking explanations is as deeply rooted a drive as seeking food or water. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Culture is our nature, and the ability to learn and change is our most important and fundamental instinct. View quote
Alison Gopnik
One of the things I say is, 'You want to know what it's like to be a baby? It's like being in love for the first time in Paris after four double espressos.' And boy, you are alive and conscious. (Alison Gopnik)
If you wanted to design a robot that could learn as well as it possibly could, you might end up with something that looked a lot like a 3-year-old. View quote
Alison Gopnik
We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly. View quote
Alison Gopnik
What makes knowledge automatic is what gets you to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice. View quote
Alison Gopnik
Each new generation of children grows up in the new environment its parents have created, and each generation of brains becomes wired in a different way. The human mind can change radically in just a few generations. View quote
Alison Gopnik