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Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker Quotes

Psychologist

Steven Pinker is a renowned cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author. His research focuses on language, cognition, and human behavior, particularly the relationship between language and thought. Pinker is known for his in-depth research on the evolution of language and his contributions to the field of cognitive science.

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Famous Steven Pinker Quotes

“Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.”

Play Player Genes Interiors Monologues

Book:How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works

“The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values.”

Problem Past Values Force Animal Emotion Moral Built Copies Genes Moral Values Untamed

Book:How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works

“But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones.”

“But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.”

Cases Possibility Genes Taboo Correlation

Author:Steven Pinker

“Heritability pertains to the entirety of the genome, not to a single gene.”

Genes Entirety Genome

Author:Steven Pinker

“The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind.”

Mind Brain Effects Complexes Consistent Bags Genes Traits

Author: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.”

Wells Mean Children Facts Kids Language Parent Talking Environment Skills Genes Talkative Language Skills

Author:Steven Pinker

“There's a common criticism of evolutionary psychology that it's fatalistic and it dooms us to eternal strife, 'Why even try to work toward peace if we're just bloody killer apes and violence is in our genes?'”

Ifs Trying Common Psychology Violence Eternal Criticism Genes Killers Bloody Strife Doom Evolutionary Psychology Apes

Author:Steven Pinker

“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.”

Want Children Self Shows Seems Justice Compassion Struggle Motive Genes Unfortunate Our Love Tactics Psychologist Children Love

Author:Steven Pinker

“No one knows what the nongenetic causes of individuality are. Perhaps people are shaped by modifications of genes that take place after conception, or by haphazard fluctuations in the chemical soup in the womb or the wiring up of the brain or the expression of the genes themselves.”

People Knows Causes Brain Expression Individuality Conception Chemicals Genes Soup Womb Modification Fluctuation Wiring Haphazard

Author:Steven Pinker

“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.”

Might Kids Culture Language Ability Race Particular Acquire Genes Innate

Author:Steven Pinker

“Of course, genes can't pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought.”

Courses Brain Behavior Patterns Seats Genes Temperament Levers Wiring Behavior Patterns

Author:Steven Pinker

“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.”

Children Parent Term Practice Environment Personality Genes Child Rearing Rearing A Child

Author:Steven Pinker

“Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.”

Sometimes Play Can Do Brain Player Building Blue Selfish Genes Selfless Organisms Interiors Blueprints Monologues Selfish Gene

Author:Steven Pinker

“Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Each of us is dealt a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes, like curiosity, ambition, empathy, a thirst for novelty or for security, a comfort level with the social or the mechanical or the abstract. Some opportunities we come across click with our constitutions and set us along a path in life.”

“Genetically influenced behavior is not necessarily good and not necessarily unchangeable. Explanations of bad behavior that appeal to genes do not absolve a person any more than do explanations that appeal to upbringing.”

Persons Evolution Behavior Appeals Explanation Genes Upbringing Unchangeable Bad Behavior

Author:Steven Pinker

About the Author

Born: September 18, 1954
Known for: Psychologist
Quotes: 394

Related Topics

People Humans Language Ifs Violence Psychology World Human Nature Thinking Reason Mind Brain Evolution Way Genes Believe Knows Moral Ideas Men

Popular Topics

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Books & Sources

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human NatureRelated source material

How the Mind WorksRelated source material

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has DeclinedRelated source material

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and ProgressRelated source material

RationalityRelated source material

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates LanguageRelated source material

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human NatureRelated source material

The Language InstinctRelated source material

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st CenturyRelated source material

Virtuous ViolenceRelated source material

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