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"Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance."
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"The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence -- these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it."
"Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery."
"In worthy teaching, all things are related."
"That which cures all worldly miseries, is called 'Scientific' Knowledge."
"It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us."
"Have books 'happened' to you? Unless your answer to that question is 'yes,' I'm unsure how to talk to you."
Explore more quotes by Steven Pinker
"Instead of asking, "Why is there war? we might ask, "Why is there peace? We can obsess not just over what we have been doing wrong but also over what we have been doing right. Because we have been doing something right, and it would be good to know what, exactly, it is."
"Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control."
"One-on-one revenge was common in foraging societies, and kin-against-kin blood feuds were common in tribal societies that had not been pacified by a colonial or national government, particularly if they had an exaggerated culture of manly honor."
"The [mental] organization of grammar [is] a case where complexity in the mind is not caused by learning, learning is caused by complexity in the mind."
"America had, for one thing, lived in anarchy for - until much more recently than Europe. We had the Wild West, where the cliche of the cowboy movies was the nearest sheriff is 90 miles away, and so you had to pack a gun and defend yourself."
"The whole point of international terrorism is to shock the world with the most horrific spectacle imaginable."
"Religious people today, compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality while getting their actual morality from more modern principles."
"Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reason that gave us the means to despoil the planet and threaten our species with weapons of mass destruction? In this way of thinking, it's character and conscience, not cold-hearted calculation, that will save us. Besides, a human being is not a brain on a stick. My fellow psychologists have shown that we're led by our bodies and our emotions and use our puny powers of reason merely to rationalize our gut feelings after the fact."
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