Steven Pinker Quotes

Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.

We have the notion that we exist but we have no way to prove it. 'I am' is the closest foundation we can get.

I drink therefore I am.

We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

The brain builds a version of the universe and projects this version of the universe like a bubble all around us. So I can say with some certainty, 'I think therefore I am.' But I cannot say, 'You think therefore you are,' because you are within my perceptual bubble.

People believe what they want to believe.

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible

There is something insane about a lack of doubt. Doubt - to me, anyway - is what makes you human, and without doubt, even the righteous lose their grip, not only on reality but also on their humanity.

We have to be aware of our fragilities as human beings - when we see cruelty, to understand that in certain conditions, we could be cruel, too.

Play the role as a human being... human beings are three-dimensional.

The more power that we have, the less human we are.

Repudiating the sensible world, which he neither sees himself nor believes from those who have, the Peripatetic joins combat by childish quibbling in a world on paper, and denies the Sun shines because he himself is blind.

Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

Some guys-a lot of guys-don't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they want to eat or drink or believe. Me, I don't believe in God. But if i saw him, I would. I wouldn't just go around saying, "Jesus, that was a great special effect." The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing.

Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, 'I think therefore I am," now raises him to say ... "I think, therefore I am not," (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action).

Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

While a modicum of consciousness may have had survivalist properties during an immemorial chapter of our evolution – so one theory goes – this faculty soon enough became a seditious agent working against us … we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see … Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are – hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones

It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves.

Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.

One of the best things about humans is we recognize patterns, so we get things like science, music, philosophy. One of the worst things is that we see patterns that are not there so we get things like racism, homophobia and Jerry Falwell.

If a lion could speak, it would not understand itself.

We're terrible at realising what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.