112 Quotes by Alison Gopnik

The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.

From an evolutionary perspective children are, literally, designed to learn. Childhood is a special period of protected immaturity. It gives the young breathing time to master the things they will need to know in order to survive as adults.

Children have a very good idea of how to distinguish between fantasies and realities. It's just they are equally interested in exploring both.

What makes knowledge automatic is what gets you to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice.

We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly.

Putting together philosophy and children would have been difficult for most of history. But very fortunately for me, when I started graduate school there was a real scientific revolution taking place in developmental psychology.

Successful creative adults seem to combine the wide-ranging exploration and openness we see in children with the focus and discipline we see in adults.

The real excitement is collaborating with computer scientists and neuroscientists and starting to understand in detail how children learn so much so quickly.

Siblings are the guarantors that the private childhood world - so unlike the adult world that scientists are only just beginning to understand it - is a fully shared and objective one.