Canadian - Scientist | September 18, 1954 -
Everywhere you look for comparisons of life under anarchy and life under government, life under government is less violent.
Steven Pinker
LifeGovernmentYouLookAnarchy
I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world.
WorldLanguageBecauseInterested
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.
NatureWindowWorldLanguageHuman
Jews are known for many things, but strength, swiftness, and agility are not among them. There is one trait, as controversial as it is familiar, for which Jews are above all known, and that is shrewdness in business.
StrengthBusinessAgilityThings
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.
MusicArtPoetryMindPainting
Violent movements attract thugs and firebrands who enjoy the mayhem. Violent tactics provide a pretext for retaliation by the enemy and alienate third parties who might otherwise support the movement.
SupportEnjoyEnemyMovementAttract
The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls.
DeathReligionWarWorldFirstHigh
If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate.
PeopleIdeasYouBadWillLiteracy
Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?
PeopleMindBrainBelieveDangerous
20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems.
RejectionBeliefMoreAstrologyThan
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.
GoodChildrenParentsLanguageMean
An eye for beauty locks onto faces that show signs of health and fertility - just as one would predict if it had evolved to help the beholder find the fittest mate.
BeautyHealthEyeHelpFindPredict
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