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Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

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.
Invention
Technology
Imagine
Actually
Mother
Play
Necessity

More quotes by 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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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
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Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.
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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.
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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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We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they find themselves. What we need to do is to do more to help poor kids have such an environment.
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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If parents are the fixed stars in the childs universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.
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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
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One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.
Alison Gopnik
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The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.
Alison Gopnik
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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.
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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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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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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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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What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.
Alison Gopnik
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On the Web we all become small-town visitors lost in the big city.
Alison Gopnik
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Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!
Alison Gopnik
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Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.
Alison Gopnik