Welcome to a collection of insightful and thought-provoking quotes by Steven Pinker, a renowned cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author. Pinker’s work has significantly influenced our understanding of human cognition, language, and the nature of human progress. Through his extensive research and prolific writing, Pinker has emerged as a leading figure in the fields of psychology and linguistics, offering compelling insights into the complexities of the human mind and society.
With a unique ability to communicate complex ideas in accessible language, Steven Pinker has gained widespread acclaim for his contributions to various academic disciplines as well as his popular books aimed at a general audience. His works, such as The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now, challenge conventional wisdom and offer optimistic perspectives on the trajectory of human civilization. Pinker’s insights shed light on the mechanisms underlying human behavior, language acquisition, and societal trends, inviting readers to reconsider their assumptions about the world around them.
Below, you’ll find a selection of Steven Pinker quotes that encapsulate his profound observations and perspectives on human nature, society, and progress. Whether you’re seeking inspiration, enlightenment, or simply a fresh perspective, these quotes offer valuable insights that can be pondered, shared, or creatively presented.
The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution. Steven Pinker
If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate. Steven Pinker
I think that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years, because it was built into its ideology – that progress comes through class struggle, often violent. Steven Pinker
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
Of course, genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Steven Pinker
I spent 20 years doing research on regular and irregular verbs, not because I’m an obsessive language lover but because it seemed to me that they tapped into a fundamental distinction in language processing, indeed in cognitive processing, between memory lookup and rule-driven computation. Steven Pinker
If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then it applies to very few acts of so-called ‘pure evil’ because most evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable. Steven Pinker
Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage? Steven Pinker
Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics. Steven Pinker
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
I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew. Steven Pinker
Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue, ‘No,’ because it’s an oblate spheroid. They suffer from ‘the curse of knowledge’: the inability to imagine what it’s like not to know something that they know. Steven Pinker
I try to jog in every city I visit, and I particularly enjoy harbour-front paths that let me ogle big ships, railroad bridges and the ruins of factories and warehouses. Steven Pinker
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
I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events. Steven Pinker
It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher. Steven Pinker
Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language. Steven Pinker
Look at almost any passage, and you’ll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It’s not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it’s just that that’s the way language works. Steven Pinker
I think the reason that swearing is both so offensive and so attractive is that it is a way to push people’s emotional buttons, and especially their negative emotional buttons. Because words soak up emotional connotations and are processed involuntarily by the listener, you can’t will yourself not to treat the word in terms of what it means. Steven Pinker
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
The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing. Steven Pinker
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with. Steven Pinker
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
Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else’s thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person’s vantage point. Steven Pinker
Plants can’t very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them. Steven Pinker
We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking – watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives. Steven Pinker
My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal police went on strike. Within hours, mayhem and rioting broke out and the Mounties had to be called in to restore order. It instilled in me that one’s convictions can be subjected to empirical test. Steven Pinker
All of the violence that doesn’t occur doesn’t get reported on the news. Steven Pinker
I don’t consider myself to be that radical a thinker. Steven Pinker
In any dispute, each side thinks it’s in the right and the other side is demons. Steven Pinker
I do look for openings where I can overturn popular misconceptions, but unlike Christopher Hitchens, I am neither a contrarian nor a lone heretic. I like to have a significant number of academics watching my back. Steven Pinker
Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate. Steven Pinker
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
Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature. Steven Pinker
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
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. Steven Pinker
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
In the 1970s, many intellectuals had become political radicals. Marxism was correct, liberalism was for wimps, and Marx had pronounced that ‘the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.’ Steven Pinker
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
My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries. Steven Pinker
You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself. Steven Pinker
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. Steven Pinker
By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu. Steven Pinker
Pre-state societies were far more violent than our own. Steven Pinker
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. Steven Pinker
Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual. Steven Pinker
Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings. Steven Pinker
Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology. Steven Pinker
It’s misleading to essentialize an entire society as if it were a single mind. Steven Pinker
You can’t hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain. Steven Pinker
With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution. Steven Pinker
Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture. Steven Pinker
Regardless of its causes, thoughtlessly blaming the present is a weakness which, even if it is never outlawed, ought to be resisted. Though commonly flaunted as a sign of sophistication, it can be an opportunity for one-upmanship and an excuse for misanthropy, especially against the young. Steven Pinker
If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think. Steven Pinker
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
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist. Steven Pinker
Though knowledge itself increasingly ignores boundaries between fields, professors are apt to organize their pedagogy around the methods and history of their academic subculture rather than some coherent topic in the world. Steven Pinker
When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner of vagueness and innuendo. We do this and expect others to do it, yet at the same time we profess to long for the plain truth, for people to say what they mean, simple as that. Such hypocrisy is a human universal. Steven Pinker
Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance. Steven Pinker
A word is an arbitrary label – that’s the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don’t snicker: Would you ever say, ‘Nothing has gone wrong yet’ without looking for wood to knock? Steven Pinker
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
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
Societies that empower women are less violent in every way. Steven Pinker
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
I like ice hockey. No one is ever going to ask me to write about that as a metaphor for life. Steven Pinker
Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity. Steven Pinker
Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection? Steven Pinker
I don’t think there was a thunderclap or a divine spark that suddenly made one species smart. You can see, in our ancestors, there was a gradual expansion of the brain; there was an expansion of the complexity of tools. Steven Pinker
Probably Hobbes got it right when he said that a leviathan, a third party with a monopoly on the use of legitimate use of force in a territory, might be among the biggest violence reduction techniques ever invented. Steven Pinker
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. Steven Pinker
Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology. Steven Pinker
The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally. Steven Pinker
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
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
The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer. Steven Pinker
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control. Steven Pinker
No one knows what the nongenetic causes of individuality are. Perhaps people are shaped by modifications of genes that take place after conception, or by haphazard fluctuations in the chemical soup in the womb or the wiring up of the brain or the expression of the genes themselves. Steven Pinker
We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade. Steven Pinker
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child’s peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration. Steven Pinker
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
Why is it surprising that scientists might have long hair and wear cowboy boots? In fields like neuroscience, where the events you are recording are so minute, I suspect scientists cultivate a boring, reliable image. A scientist with a reputation for flamboyance might be suspect. Steven Pinker
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
You wouldn’t believe the kind of hate mail I get about my work on irregular verbs. Steven Pinker
Personality and socialization aren’t the same thing. Steven Pinker
As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world’s ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to genocide. Steven Pinker
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
An enormous amount of scientific language is metaphorical. We talk about a genetic code, where code originally meant a cipher; we talk about the solar system model of the atom as though the atom were like a sun and moon and planets. Steven Pinker
We’re living in primate heaven. We’re warm, dry, we’re not hungry, we don’t have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable? Steven Pinker
The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate… is a totalitarian’s dream. Steven Pinker
Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along. Steven Pinker
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
By all measures men are the more violent gender. Steven Pinker
‘Capitalism’ is a dirty word for many intellectuals, but there are a number of studies showing that open economies and free trade are negatively correlated with genocide and war. Steven Pinker
The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero. Steven Pinker
The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls. Steven Pinker
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. Steven Pinker
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
Obviously no language is innate. Take any kid from any race, bring them up in any culture and they will learn the language equally quickly. So no particular language is in the genes. But what might be in the genes is the ability to acquire language. Steven Pinker
Economic libertarians and Christian evangelicals, united by their common enemy, are strange bedfellows in today’s Republican party, just as the two Georges – the archconservative Wallace and the uberliberal McGovern – found themselves in the same Democratic Party in 1972. Steven Pinker
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
