Steven Pinker Quotes

• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to compute it.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Science

• The mind is a neural computer.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Science

• Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Believe

• There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learning

• The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mind, Doctrine

• The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human Nature

• 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 terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Genes

• Personality and socialization aren’t the same thing.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Personality

• People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven’t given much thought to the connections.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Today

• Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Parents

• My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human Nature

• Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Intellectuals, Today

• Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Art

  Tags in Artists

• I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Confusion, Artists

• I don’t consider myself to be that radical a thinker.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Consider

• Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Psychology

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Exploring, Moral

• But the newest research is showing that many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don’t depend on information coming in from the senses.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Research

• But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Possibility

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

  Steven Pinker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Commitment, Writers

Steven Pinker (21)

Birth:	18th September, 1954
Nationality:	Canadian
Profession:	Author, Linguist, Psychologist, Scientist

Related Authors

• Louise Mensch
• Agate Nesaule
• Gary Hopkins
• John Holt
• Barry Lopez
• Homer Smith
• John Granger
• Josh Stern
• Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
• Noah Levine

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st April

Births

• 1927 - Robert Brustein
• 1864 - Max Weber
• 1909 - Rollo May
• 1935 - Thomas H. Kean
• 1959 - Robert Smith

Deaths

• 2003 - Nina Simone
• 1851 - James Barron
• 1952 - Leslie Banks
• 1938 - Muhammad Iqbal
• 2012 - Russell Green