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" Commerce is a noble profession, and Jews should get over any self-hatred they might harbor from contemplating the capitalist spirit of diaspora Judaism. "
Steven Pinker
Spirit
Over
Judaism
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" If you aren't just brought up in your tribe but interact with other people either directly or vicariously, through journalism and literature, you see what life is like from other points of view and are less likely to demonize them or dehumanize others and more likely to empathize with them. "
Steven Pinker
Journalism
Life
People
" Photography is a demanding action sport. The light can change so quickly. I often find myself sprinting so that I can catch the perfect light falling on a photogenic subject. "
Steven Pinker
Light
Action
Change
" 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. "
Steven Pinker
World
Reading
Technology
" Obviously no language is innate. Take any kid from any race, bring them up in any culture and they will learn the language equally quickly. So no particular language is in the genes. But what might be in the genes is the ability to acquire language. "
Steven Pinker
Language
Kid
Up
" The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero. "
Steven Pinker
Simple
Blank
Fact
" Though as a psychologist I like to think that nothing human is foreign to me, I admit to having been repeatedly flabbergasted by the insouciance, and sometimes relish, with which our ancestors carried out and witnessed unspeakable cruelties. "
Steven Pinker
Ancestors
Nothing
Think
" Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with. "
Steven Pinker
Tyranny
Democracy
You
" The decline of violence isn't a steady inclined plane from an original state of maximal and universal bloodshed. Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with. "
Steven Pinker
Technology
Humanity
Changes
" Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday. "
Steven Pinker
Some People
War
Peace
" A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and incapacitates psychopaths, bullies and hotheads - and if it earns the confidence of the people, they don't have to become violent in self-defence. "
Steven Pinker
Confidence
Police
People
" People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections. "
Steven Pinker
Political
Seem
Today
" The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress. "
Steven Pinker
Help
Comfort
Early
" It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher. "
Steven Pinker
Men
Battle
Death
" Everyone's pedigree merges into everyone else's pedigree. So if you go back far enough, everyone is related. "
Steven Pinker
Back
Everyone
Enough
" There is a correlation between economic inequality and personal violence. The explanation for the correlation isn't completely clear; there are a number of possibilities. "
Steven Pinker
Possibilities
Violence
Inequality
" Personality and socialization aren't the same thing. "
Steven Pinker
Personality
Same Thing
Thing
" People know there is a difference between what you do and what you accept. There is a difference between me knowing that people swear, me hearing people swear and me swearing, and everyone accepting that this is something you can do as much as you like. "
Steven Pinker
Know
Knowing
Me
" All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on. "
Steven Pinker
Magic
Reason
Result
" Evolution is an indispensable component of any satisfying explanation of our psychology. "
Steven Pinker
Evolution
Psychology
Explanation
" People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time. "
Steven Pinker
Impression
Language
Over
" I don't consider myself to be that radical a thinker. "
Steven Pinker
Radical
Thinker
Consider
" Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world. "
Steven Pinker
Window
World
Human Nature
" I have never been a fan of science fiction. For me, fiction has to explore the combinatorial possibilities of people interacting under the constraints imposed by our biology and history. When an author is free to suspend the constraints, it's tennis without a net. "
Steven Pinker
History
Me
Science
" Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested - to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes. "
Steven Pinker
Children
Struggle
Want
" Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity. "
Steven Pinker
Change
Bad
Conflict
" The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years. "
Steven Pinker
Years
Violence
See
" Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence, accident, or disease. "
Steven Pinker
Death
Dying
Violence
" One of the things that people complain about is loneliness, disconnectedness. If you live in a society where your life is rarely threatened and most of your relationships are more on an economic exchange basis, then this could leave people feeling less connected. "
Steven Pinker
People
Life
Live
" When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner of vagueness and innuendo. We do this and expect others to do it, yet at the same time we profess to long for the plain truth, for people to say what they mean, simple as that. Such hypocrisy is a human universal. "
Steven Pinker
Simple
Truth
Long
" I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books. While I'm writing a book, which I probably do two out of every three years, it's like having a second job. I squeeze in the hours when I can. "
Steven Pinker
Time
Rest
Research