Quotes from Steven Pinker

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.

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence, accident, or disease.

Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?

As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

The likelihood that inborn differences are one contributor to social status does not mean that it is the only contributor.

The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally.