Quotes by Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

Explore a curated collection of 35 quotes by Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works. Discover timeless wisdom, insightful thoughts, and memorable words that have inspired readers around the world. Browse through the gallery below and click on any quote to read more.

Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors t — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Language-lovers know that there is a word for every fear. Are you afraid of wine? Then you have oenophobia. Tremulous ab — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
the mind is a neural computer — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Many textbooks point out that no animal has evolved wheels and cite the fact as an example of how evolution is often inc — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the s — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
The unstated premise that nature is nice lies behind many of the objections to the Darwinian theory of human sexuality. — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
The Darwinian approach to sex is often attacked as being antifeminist, but that is just wrong. Indeed, the accusation is — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But th — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that “animals try to spread their genes.” That misstates the — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science. — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Friendship, like other kinds of altruism, is vulnerable to cheaters, and we have a special name for them: fair-weather f — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
A bumper sticker from the 1970s read, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by e — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
cademics and intellectuals are culture vultures. In a gathering of today’s elite, it is perfectly acceptable to laugh th — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms. Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Apes have a wide variety of sexual arrangements. That means, by the way, that there is no such thing as an “ape legacy” — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Even evolutionary explanations of the traditional division of labor by sex do not imply that it is unchangeable, “natura — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Thinking is computation, I claim, but that does not mean that the computer is a good metaphor for the mind. The mind is — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Perhaps we should rejoice that people’s emotions aren’t designed for the good of the group. Often the best way to benefi — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Plato said that we are trapped inside a cave and know the world only through the shadows it casts on the wall. The skull — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works