Quote

However much we might deplore the profit motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants i-Pods we would probably be better off than if they wanted class revolution.

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
Class
Consumerist
Values
Deplore
Everyone
Motive
Better
Profit
Wanted
However
Might
Revolution
Much
Wants
Would
Probably
Pods

More quotes by Steven Pinker

Image
Jews are known for many things, but strength, swiftness, and agility are not among them. There is one trait, as controversial as it is familiar, for which Jews are above all known, and that is shrewdness in business.
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
There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.
Steven Pinker
Image
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
Image
I have never been a fan of science fiction. For me, fiction has to explore the combinatorial possibilities of people interacting under the constraints imposed by our biology and history. When an author is free to suspend the constraints, it's tennis without a net.
Steven Pinker
Image
Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries.
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
A successful learner, . . . must be constrained to draw some conclusions from the input and not others.
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
Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality - the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world.
Steven Pinker
Image
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
Image
The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.
Steven Pinker
Image
Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth.
Steven Pinker
Image
The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past it is that they were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values.
Steven Pinker
Image
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't believe in reason.
Steven Pinker
Image
All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.
Steven Pinker
Image
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.
Steven Pinker
Image
We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.
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
The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer.
Steven Pinker