Steven Pinker Quotes - Page 10

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By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.

Steven Pinker

Discovery, Political, Intellectual

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'Capitalism' is a dirty word for many intellectuals, but there are a number of studies showing that open economies and free trade are negatively correlated with genocide and war.

Steven Pinker

War, Dirty, Numbers

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Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity.

Steven Pinker

Climate, Scarcity, Waste

"Steven Pinker: 'Artists used to gush about the beauty of war. The First World War put an end to that'". Interview with Clint Witchalls, www.independent.co.uk. November 10, 2011.

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We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.

Steven Pinker

Children, Views, Law

Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.480, Penguin

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Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied.

Steven Pinker

Agency, Space, Research

Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.355, W. W. Norton & Company

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Photography is a demanding action sport. The light can change so quickly. I often find myself sprinting so that I can catch the perfect light falling on a photogenic subject.

Steven Pinker

Sports, Photography, Fall

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Regardless of its causes, thoughtlessly blaming the present is a weakness which, even if it is never outlawed, ought to be resisted. Though commonly flaunted as a sign of sophistication, it can be an opportunity for one-upmanship and an excuse for misanthropy, especially against the young.

Steven Pinker

Opportunity, Weakness, Causes

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Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas.

Steven Pinker

Latin, Writing, Editing

Steven Pinker (1994). “The Language Instinct”, William Morrow & Company

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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.

Steven Pinker

Differences, Knowing, People

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One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land.

Steven Pinker

Country, Character, Land

"My week" by Steven Pinker, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2007.

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We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives.

Steven Pinker

Violence, World, Violent

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I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.

Steven Pinker

Book, Writing, Years

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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.

Steven Pinker

People, Important, Warfare

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For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'sieges' instead of calling them 'genocides.'

Steven Pinker

People, Calling, Care

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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 of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago.

Steven Pinker

Ideas, Years, Tree

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We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.

Steven Pinker

Vocabulary, Brain, Events

Steven Pinker (2010). “The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language”, p.1, Harper Collins

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Of course, genes can't pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought.

Steven Pinker

Brain, Patterns, Levers

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As individual people, embedded in our daily lives, of course we're interested in what makes one person different from another. We've got to hire one person and not another, marry one person and not another.

Steven Pinker

People, Different, Daily Life

"Basic instincts". Interview with Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. September 22, 2007.

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As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

Steven Pinker

Commitment, Equality, People

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You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.

Steven Pinker

Animal, Thinking, Race

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Why is it surprising that scientists might have long hair and wear cowboy boots? In fields like neuroscience, where the events you are recording are so minute, I suspect scientists cultivate a boring, reliable image. A scientist with a reputation for flamboyance might be suspect.

Steven Pinker

Cowboy, Hair, Long

"This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2008.

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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

Cities, People, Interesting

"My week" by Steven Pinker, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2007.

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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 who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.

Steven Pinker

Dream, Selfish, Book

"How the Mind Works". Book by Steven Pinker, 1997.

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If the cartoon were completely accurate, though, life would be a cacophany of spoinks.

Steven Pinker

Cartoon, Would Be, Accurate

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Like the early days of the Internet, the dawn of personal genomics promises benefits and pitfalls that no one can foresee.

Steven Pinker

Promise, Benefits, Dawn

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Born: September 18, 1954
Occupation: Psychologist
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