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Steven Pinker Quotes

Total quotes: 7
“When we know something well, we don't realize how abstractly we think about it. And we forget that other people, who have lived their own lives, have not gone through our idiosyncratic histories of abstractification.”
— Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Tagged: Abstractification, Curse of Knowledge, Personal History
“Classic style is not the only way to write. But it's an ideal that can pull writers away from many of their worst habits, and it works particularly well because it makes the unnatural act of writing seem like two of our most natural acts: talking and seeing.”
— Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Tagged: Writing Strategies, Classic Style
“No matter how small the percentage of violent deaths may be, in absolute numbers there will always be enough of them to fill the evening news, so people's impressions of violence will be disconnected from the actual proportions.”
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Tagged: Media Manipulation, The Media, Violence
“Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.”
— Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Tagged: Prose, Writing
“Language is not a protocol legislated by an authority but rather a wiki that pools the contributions of millions of writers and speakers, who ceaselessly bend the language to their needs and who inexorably age, die, and get replaced by their children, who adapt the language in their turn.”
— Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Tagged: Adaptability, Authority, Change, Evolution, Language, Wiki, Evolution of Rules
“Evolution is central to the understanding of life, including human life. Like all living things, we are outcomes of natural selection; we got here because we inherited traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, find mates, and reproduce. This momentous fact explains our deepest strivings: why having a thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth, why it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, why we do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
— Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate
Tagged: Psychology, Philosophy, How To Think, The Art of Awareness
“Fiction may be, at least in part, a pleasure technology, a co-opting of language and imagery as a virtual reality device which allows a reader to enjoy pleasant hallucinations like exploring interesting territories, conquering enemies, hobnobbing with powerful people, and winning attractive mates. Fiction, moreover, can tickle people's fancies without even having to project them into a thrilling vicarious experience.”
— Steven Pinker, Harvard.edu
Tagged: fiction, Reading, Virtuality
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