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In any dispute, each side thinks it's in the right and the other side is demons.

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
Thinks
Side
Sides
Right
Thinking
Dispute
Demons
Disputes
Demon

More quotes by Steven Pinker

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One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land.
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Of course the theory of evolution would be vacuous if it offered a glib explanation for every inexplicable act.
Steven Pinker
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Whenever you speak to someone, you are presuming the two of you have a certain degree of familiarity - which your words might alter. So every sentence has to do two things at once: convey a message and continue to negotiate that relationship.
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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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My laptop has freed me to travel.
Steven Pinker
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An eye for beauty locks onto faces that show signs of health and fertility - just as one would predict if it had evolved to help the beholder find the fittest mate.
Steven Pinker
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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.
Steven Pinker
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There's a common criticism of evolutionary psychology that it's fatalistic and it dooms us to eternal strife, 'Why even try to work toward peace if we're just bloody killer apes and violence is in our genes?'
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.
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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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)
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For example, parents who talk a lot to their children have kids with better language skills, parents who spank have children who grow up to be violent, parents who are neither too authoritarian or too lenient have children who are well-adjusted, and so on.
Steven Pinker
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Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday.
Steven Pinker
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Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men.
Steven Pinker
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If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important.
Steven Pinker
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I think a lot of moral debates are not over what is the basis of justice, but who gets a ticket to play in the game.
Steven Pinker
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People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely.
Steven Pinker
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The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer.
Steven Pinker
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If crime is going down, you shouldn't be increasing resources for crime prevention. Or you should be taking note of what has worked and concentrate the crime-prevention methods on policies that have a track record of success.
Steven Pinker
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Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language.
Steven Pinker