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. Steven Pinker More Quotes by Steven Pinker More Quotes From Steven Pinker As individual people, embedded in our daily lives, of course we're interested in what makes one person different from another. We've got to hire one person and not another, marry one person and not another. Steven Pinker daily-life different people The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth. Steven Pinker tourists age baby Whenever you speak to someone, you are presuming the two of you have a certain degree of familiarity - which your words might alter. So every sentence has to do two things at once: convey a message and continue to negotiate that relationship. Steven Pinker degrees might two We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view. Steven Pinker views law children The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn't all that high. Steven Pinker scales impact mind 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. Steven Pinker bags mind brain 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 long mean I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture. Steven Pinker intellectual culture thinking There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization. Steven Pinker acquire doe culture As an experimental psychologist, I have been trained not to believe anything unless it can be demonstrated in the laboratory on rats or sophomores. Steven Pinker sophomore rats believe Ancestor worship must be an appealing idea to those who are about to become ancestors. Steven Pinker The news is a systematically misleading way to understand the world. Steven Pinker world The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steven Pinker world For 500 years, Western European countries started two new wars a year ; since World War Two the number has been zero. Steven Pinker world We know about every massacre that has taken place close to the present, but the ones in the distant past are like trees falling in the forest with no one to hear them. Steven Pinker forest place know past The way to understand how different species evolved is to think about the niches that they fill in an ecosystem - basically, how they make a living. Steven Pinker understand think living way Everywhere you look for comparisons of life under anarchy and life under government, life under government is less violent. Steven Pinker look you government life A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature. Steven Pinker nothing family communism nature
