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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

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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
Use
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Lost
Argument
Negotiable
Reason
Case
Exclude
Trying
Cases
Realm
Believe
Already
Argue
Way
Belief
Realms
Make
Knowledge
Arguing
People
Faith
Using

More quotes by Steven Pinker

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Disgust is intuitive microbiology
Steven Pinker
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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
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Journalists say that when a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news ... Thanks to the mathematics of combinatorics, we will never run out of news.
Steven Pinker
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Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology.
Steven Pinker
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Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language.
Steven Pinker
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Violent movements attract thugs and firebrands who enjoy the mayhem. Violent tactics provide a pretext for retaliation by the enemy and alienate third parties who might otherwise support the movement.
Steven Pinker
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Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.
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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Without goals the very concept of intelligence is meaningless
Steven Pinker
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It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.
Steven Pinker
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Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.
Steven Pinker
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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
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If you aren't just brought up in your tribe but interact with other people either directly or vicariously, through journalism and literature, you see what life is like from other points of view and are less likely to demonize them or dehumanize others and more likely to empathize with them.
Steven Pinker
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Morality comes from a commitment to treat other as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe.
Steven Pinker
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Words let us say the things we want to say and also things we would be better off not having said. They let us know the things we need to know, and also things we wish we didn't.
Steven Pinker
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If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
Steven Pinker
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As an experimental psychologist, I have been trained not to believe anything unless it can be demonstrated in the laboratory on rats or sophomores.
Steven Pinker
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Gossip is certainly one of the things that language is useful for, because it's always handy to know who needs a favor, who can offer a favor, who's available, who's under the protection of a jealous spouse. And being the first to get a piece of gossip is like engaging in insider trading: You can capitalize on an opportunity before anyone else can.
Steven Pinker
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I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.
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