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"What could be more fundamental to our sense of meaning and purpose than a conception of whether the strivings of the human race over long stretches of time have left us better or worse off? How, in particular, are we to make sense of modernity-of the erosion of family, tribe, tradition, and religion by the forces of individualism, cosmopolitanism, reason, and science?"
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Exlpore more Philosophy quotes
"I became one of those anonymous Americans who tries to keep his mind sharp and inquisitive while performing all the humiliating rituals of the middle class"
"In the equation of life, the limit does not exist."
"When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children"
"Think independently and critically, but never forget to think with understanding and love."
"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."
"Whatever you desire, it comes from the universe, and whatever you manifest, be it situations, the right partner, friend, or spouse, the right pet, anything at all, IS the universe, for the universe IS everything."
"Imagine others complexly."
"I am not me. I am not my body. I am my love, my kindness, and my service."
"Have faith in the universe and its capability to lead you to the path of abundance."
Explore more quotes by Steven Pinker
"The main reason that violence correlates with low socioeconomic status today is that the elites and the middle class pursue justice with the legal system while the lower classes resort to what scholars of violence call "self-help."
"Much can be gained be contrasting a theory with its alternatives, even ones that look too extreme to be true. You can really understand something when you know what it is not."
"The violence of a lower-class man may indeed express rage, but it is aimed not at society but at the asshole who scraped his car and dissed him in front of a crowd."
"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."
"In hermetic isolation, all kinds of bizarre and toxic ideas can fester. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and exposing a bad idea to the critical glare of other minds provides at least a chance that it will wither and die."
"Legal investigation. As Clinton noted, "My goal in this deposition was to be truthful, but not particularly helpful."
"Organisms are selected to deploy violence only in circumstances where the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs."
"The audible signals people can produce are not a series of crisp beeps like on a touch-tone phone. Speech is a river of breath, bent into hisses and hums by the soft flesh of the mouth and throat."
"An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny."
"Evolution is central to the understanding of life, including human life. Like all living things, we are outcomes of natural selection; we got here because we inherited traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, find mates, and reproduce. This momentous fact explains our deepest strivings: why having a thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth, why it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, why we do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light."
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