Quote

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

Steven Pinker

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Steven Pinker
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 18
Anthropologist
Linguist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
University Teacher
Montreal
Quebec
Steven Arthur Pinker
Artists
Depends
Artist
Art
Nature
Scholars
Human
Pointed
Humans
Scholar
Many
Ultimately

More quotes by Steven Pinker

Image
Everyone's pedigree merges into everyone else's pedigree. So if you go back far enough, everyone is related.
Steven Pinker
Image
The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience . Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal.
Steven Pinker
Image
Disgust is intuitive microbiology
Steven Pinker
Image
One of the perks of being a psychologist is access to tools that allow you to carry out the injunction to know thyself.
Steven Pinker
Image
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
Image
The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally.
Steven Pinker
Image
Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak they just do. But reading is different.
Steven Pinker
Image
Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn x (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)
Steven Pinker
Image
We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust.
Steven Pinker
Image
We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.
Steven Pinker
Image
Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family.
Steven Pinker
Image
A...reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.
Steven Pinker
Image
We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one.
Steven Pinker
Image
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
Image
In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints ... and gods.
Steven Pinker
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
In societies no less than individuals, acknowledging our limitations may ultimately be more humane than denying them.
Steven Pinker