751 Quotes by Steven Pinker

It's also a recognition that however much people might vary, they have certain things in common by virtue of their common human nature.

Effective education may also require co-opting old faculties to deal with new demands. . . Because much of the content of education is not cognitively natural, the process of mastering it may not always be easy and pleasant, notwithstanding the mantra that learning is fun.

Racism, because it favors color over talent, is bad for business.

That isn't really a question that can be answered.

A successful learner, . . . must be constrained to draw some conclusions from the input and not others.

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

no more similar than two people plucked off the street at random.

Education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn how to walk, talk, recognize objects, or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding, or remembering dates in history. They do have to go to school to learn written language, arithmetic, and science, because those bodies of knowledge and skill were invented too recently for any species-wide knack for them to have evolved.

Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and their children live longer.