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Owning our past allows us to own our future.

Alison Gopnik

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Alison Gopnik
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: June 16
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
A. Gopnik
A Gopnik
Gopnik
Gopnik A
Gopnik A.
Owning
Allows
Future
Past

More quotes by Alison Gopnik

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On the Web we all become small-town visitors lost in the big city.
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If you just got enough expertise and enough special techniques and read up enough, then you could shape a child into the kind of adult you wanted. There's almost this kind of competitive enterprise. That picture is the picture I think people often imply when they use the word parenting.
Alison Gopnik
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We're in a culture where everything is either consumption or production, so child care is either a very, very bad-paying form of work or a very expensive luxury that you purchase. There isn't a good place in our picture of the world for what caregiving is about. Even teenage babysitters have sort of disappeared from the scene.
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What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.
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I'm culturally Jewish but, like most scientists, an atheist: I don't believe there's a God or supernatural world. Buddhism offers guidance on what to do in a world without God: It opines that truly being present in the world‚ experiencing and hanging out with your loved ones, provides all the significance you could want.
Alison Gopnik
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We provide a secure, stable space for children to grow up in, so children will be able to take risks and have adventures and do things that are unexpected. If there isn't a risk that your children can fail, then you haven't succeeded as a parent.
Alison Gopnik
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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.
Alison Gopnik
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Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments.
Alison Gopnik
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I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.
Alison Gopnik
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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.
Alison Gopnik
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To support the people we care about is intrinsic, it is not instrumental. It's not something we do because we're hoping to get some other outcome.
Alison Gopnik
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Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.
Alison Gopnik
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Philosophers and psychologists have long puzzled over the question of how we know as much as we do despite our limited experiences. One way is to see how children learn. Another example is consciousness. The concept is usually explored by armchair academics. Looking at kids expands our conceptions of consciousness.
Alison Gopnik
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Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.
Alison Gopnik
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What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness.
Alison Gopnik
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Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren.
Alison Gopnik
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It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.
Alison Gopnik
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There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their own person. If there were a pill that would make my child turn out the way I wanted, I'm not sure I'd take it.
Alison Gopnik
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Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.
Alison Gopnik
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Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.
Alison Gopnik