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"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."
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"History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles."

"It reaffirmed my long-held belief that education was the enemy of prejudice. These were men and women of science, and science had no room for racism."

"Trying to educate the dumb with a dumb teacher is nothing but washing the dirty clothes in a dirty water!"

"If my career detour from special education to singing has done one thing, it has afforded me the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others."

"No one can get an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process."

"We shall always meet teachers but we shall seldom meet good teachers. We shall seldom meet a good teacher who is good enough to direct the body, mind and soul towards the path of true purposefulness. We shall hardly meet good teachers who are good enough to leave indelible and distinctive footprints in our minds; good teachers whose words, thoughts, actions and wonderful deeds would continue to reecho themselves in our minds and become the yardstick, guiding principles and reasons for the steps we take each moment of time. We shall always meet teachers but, we shall seldom and hardly meet great teachers!"

"I now teach at American University and the University of Virginia."
Explore more quotes by Steven Pinker


"Many people implicitly believe in the Hydraulic Theory of Violence: that humans harbor an inner drive toward aggression (a death instinct or thirst for blood), which builds up inside us and must periodically be discharged. Nothing could be further from a contemporary scientific understanding of the psychology of violence. Aggression is not a single motive, let alone a mounting urge. It is the output of several psychological systems that differ in their environmental triggers, their internal logic, their neurobiological basis, and their social distribution."


"The Darwinian approach to sex is often attacked as being antifeminist, but that is just wrong. Indeed, the accusation is baffling on the face of it, especially to the many feminist women who have developed and tested the theory. The core of feminism is surely the goal of ending sexual discrimination and exploitation, an ethical and political position that is in no danger of being refuted by any foreseeable scientific theory or discovery."


"Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about human nature is not. Eliminating discrimination against women is important, but believing that women and men are born with indistinguishable minds is not. Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast male conspiracy is not."


"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."


"Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to feel better about themselves, and in the late 1980s led the California legislature to form a Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. Yet Baumeister has shown that the theory could not be more spectacularly, hilariously, achingly wrong. Violence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned."


"Equality 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."


"What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt threatened."


"As with any form of mental self-improvement, you must learn to turn your gaze inward, concentrate on processes that usually run automatically, and try to wrest control of them so that you can apply them more mindfully."


"The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen."
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