Steven Pinker quotes - page 6

Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that's going to expand. (Steven Pinker)
The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally. View quote
Steven Pinker
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with. View quote
Steven Pinker
A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and incapacitates psychopaths, bullies and hotheads - and if it earns the confidence of the people, they don't have to become violent in self-defence. View quote
Steven Pinker
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. View quote
Steven Pinker
Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world. View quote
Steven Pinker
However much we might deplore the profit motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants i-Pods we would probably be better off than if they wanted class revolution. View quote
Steven Pinker
I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events. View quote
Steven Pinker
As a graduate student, I wrote a long paper connecting the dots between mathematical models of learning and language development in children. It was published in a major journal. View quote
Steven Pinker
As women are empowered, violence can come down, for a number of reasons. By all measures, men are the more violent gender. View quote
Steven Pinker
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 innuendo. We do this and expect others to do it, yet at the same time we profess to long for the plain truth, for people to say what they mean, simple as that. Such hypocrisy is a human universal. (Steven Pinker)
Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics. View quote
Steven Pinker
We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade. View quote
Steven Pinker
If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think. View quote
Steven Pinker
I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties. View quote
Steven Pinker
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 others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along. View quote
Steven Pinker
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist. View quote
Steven Pinker
America had, for one thing, lived in anarchy for - until much more recently than Europe. We had the Wild West, where the cliche of the cowboy movies was the nearest sheriff is 90 miles away, and so you had to pack a gun and defend yourself. View quote
Steven Pinker
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 pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream. View quote
Steven Pinker
Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality. View quote
Steven Pinker
If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called 'pure evil' because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable. (Steven Pinker)
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, for which Jews are above all known, and that is shrewdness in business. View quote
Steven Pinker
I think that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years, because it was built into its ideology - that progress comes through class struggle, often violent. View quote
Steven Pinker
Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and their children live longer. View quote
Steven Pinker
Probably Hobbes got it right when he said that a leviathan, a third party with a monopoly on the use of legitimate use of force in a territory, might be among the biggest violence reduction techniques ever invented. View quote
Steven Pinker