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I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Steven Pinker

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Steven Pinker
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 18
Anthropologist
Linguist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
University Teacher
Montreal
Quebec
Steven Arthur Pinker
Life
Consciousness
Purpose
Argue
Moment
Fragile
Moments
Arguing
Nothing
Realization
Giving
Precious
Every
Gift
Would
Gives

More quotes by Steven Pinker

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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.
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We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.
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The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally.
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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.
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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.
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As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty.
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Astrology had an important role in the ancient world. You can't understand many things unless you know something about astrology - the plays of Shakespeare and so on.
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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.
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The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.
Steven Pinker
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There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal.
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The world has far too much morality.
Steven Pinker
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I don't think aggression works like thirst or sleep. I think aggression is more elicited by particular situations. I think it can be mitigated.
Steven Pinker
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An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny.
Steven Pinker
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The reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong level of analysis. You have to look at a higher level of organization.
Steven Pinker
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Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world.
Steven Pinker
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No matter how inured you get to atrocities, you're still always stunned and shocked by how cruel and wasteful Homo sapiens can be.
Steven Pinker
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Evolution is an indispensable component of any satisfying explanation of our psychology.
Steven Pinker
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Solving a problem in a hundred years is, practically speaking, the same as not solving it at all.
Steven Pinker
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My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries.
Steven Pinker
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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