The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.Steven Pinker
Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.Steven Pinker
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.Steven Pinker
Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual.Steven Pinker
I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment.Steven Pinker
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
Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that's going to expand.Steven Pinker
I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.Steven Pinker
I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events.Steven Pinker
Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.Steven Pinker
