Steven Pinker Quotes

Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia.

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.

But if you are going to wear blinders then you do not know the world.

Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us and we don't see beyond that.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of truth.

Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.

There's book smart, there is street smart, there's relationship smart, there's too many different kinds of smarts to know all of them. Everybody doesn't know every kind of smart. There's money smart, there's movie smart, there's computer smart. There's just too many different kinds of smarts for people to know all the smarts.

The prevailing - and foolish - attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he's managing. A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he's put in charge anyway.

Every one of my opponents, every one of my critics, will tell you that I am a generalist spread far too thin in an age when this is not done anymore, when responsible knowledge is specialized knowledge.

Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.

All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.

The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness.

It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that eye in the back of his head.

I think that a lot of people in all walks of life have the impression, of course, that, 'I specialize in something. I can't - I don't have the time to read other things. I'll just go to pure entertainment when I'm relaxing, and then I'll come back to my pure specialty.' That produces - that attitude produces idiot savants, unfortunately.

It's gonna sound so boring to most people. There have been times when I've been told, 'Oh, you're doing an album about physics? I hope it's not boring.' They don't get the idea. Because rappers are so one-dimensional, so narrow-minded, it comes off corny.

There are some things the arrogant mind does not see; it is blinded by its vision of what it desires.

Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.

To eliminate the discrepancy between men's plans and the results achieved, a new approach is necessary. Morphological thinking suggests that this new approach cannot be realized through increased teaching of specialized knowledge. This morphological analysis suggests that the essential fact has been overlooked that every human is potentially a genius. Education and dissemination of knowledge must assume a form which allows each student to absorb whatever develops his own genius, lest he become frustrated. The same outlook applies to the genius of the peoples as a whole.

A smattering of everything is worth little. It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopaedic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by the thorough possession of something.

I'm right, and everyone else is wrong.

A liberally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear.