Steven Pinker

“Intelligence...is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions based on rational (truth-obeying) rules.”

“We call an approach rational when some goal was accomplished. I use the wonderful passage from William James who said that we try to contrast a rational entity from a non-rational entity. For example, Romeo wants Juliet as the iron fillings want the magnet. And, if no obstacles intervene, he approaches her by as straight a path as the fillings. But, if there is a wall between them, they don't press their faces against the opposite sides idiotically like the fillings... Romeo finds a way of getting over the wall or around the wall. The difference is that with a purely physical process (with a non-rational process) the trajectory is fixed whether it reaches an end just depends on accidents, on all things being arranged right. With a rational agent the end is fixed first, and the actual trajectories can be varied indefinitely. That is a good characterization of intuitively what we mean by rationality.”

“[E]quality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group. ...If we recognize this principle, no one has to spin myths about the indistinguishability of the sexes to justify equality.”

“The problem with the religious solution [to philosophical problems] was stated by Mencken when he wrote, 'Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.' For anyone with a persistent intellectual curiosity, religious explanations are not worth knowing because they pile equally baffling enigmas on top of the original ones. What gave God a mind, free will, knowledge, certainty about right and wrong? How does he infuse them into a universe that seems to run just fine according to physical laws? How does he get ghostly souls to interact with hard matter? And most perplexing of all, if the world unfolds according to a wise and merciful plan, why does it contain so much suffering? As the Yiddish expression says, If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”

“Contrary to popular belief, the gene-centered theory of evolution does not imply that the point of all human striving is to spread our genes.”

“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?”

“[T]he brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal...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.”

“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 more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs.”

“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.”

“Societies that empower women are less violent in every way.”

“A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.”

“For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.”

“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.”

“It begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.”

“The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.”

“We do know that there are certain norms and institutions and rules of the game that we voluntarily surrender to in order to become collectively more rational than any of us can be individually; for example free speech, the right to criticize without being punished by violence; in the sciences, pier review; in politics, checks and balances; in the criminal justice system, the right of representation by an attorney, and trial by jury, and the presumption of innocence. All of these norms that we set up precisely because we can't appeal to the wisdom of a noble virtuous king or judge or authority. Knowing that being human they will be susceptible to all of the follies and biases and illusions. But that there can be rules that we abide by that make us smarter than we would be individually.”

“[Language] is the trait that most conspicuously distinguishes humans from other species. It is essential to human cooperation. We accomplish amazing things by sharing our knowledge or coordinating our action by means of words. It poses profound scientific mysteries; such as, How did language evolve in this particular species? How does the brain compute language? But also, language has many practical applications; not surprisingly, given how central it is to human life. Language comes so naturally to us that we are apt to forget what a strange and miraculous gift it is.”

“Language is eternally fascinating because it speaks to such fundamental questions of the human condition. Language is really at the center of a number of different concerns: of thought, of social relationships, of human biology, of human evolution that all speak to what is special about the human species. Language is the most distinctly human talent. language is a window into human nature. And, most significantly, language is one of the wonders of the natural world.”

“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.”
“Morality...is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games.”
“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...”
“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...”
“'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.”
“Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person .... 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.”

“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.”

“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.”

“We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naive to work toward a better one.”

“Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.”

“The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit the facts of history.”

“Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric.”

“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.”

“The Rights Revolutions too have given us ideals that educated people today take for granted but that are virtually unprecedented in human history, such as that people of all races and creeds have equal rights, that women should be free from all forms of coercion, that children should never, ever be spanked, that students should be protected from bullying, and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I don’t find it at all implausible that these are gifts, in part, of a refined and widening application of reason.”

“Language surely does affect our thoughts, rather than just labeling them for the sake of labeling them. Most obviously, language is the conduit through which people share their thoughts and intentions and thereby acquire the knowledge, customs, and values of those around them.”
“Humans are so innately hardwired for language that they can no more suppress their ability to learn and use language than they can suppress the instinct to pull a hand back from a hot surface. I don't think language could have evolved if it was the only distinctive trait. It goes hand in hand with our ability to develop tools and technologies, and also with the fact that we cooperate with nonrelatives.”

“[T]he form of a mental representation determines what is easy or hard to think...Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.”


Pinker “Free Speech” 20:20


Pinker “Morality” 7:30


Human Progress | Why We Think We Live In Terrible Times 14:38


A conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Enlightenment Now 1:02:59


Steven Pinker on Concepts and Reasoning 1:10:38


Steven Pinker videos on youTube