Steven Pinker Quotes

Genes are not destiny!

Genes don't mean necessarily that you have got a certain strand of gene that makes you particularly acceptable as a public official.

Well, it arose out of two long-term concerns - the first being the possibility of genetic manipulation, nature versus nurture, what constitutes how people get to be how they are.

Your genetics load the gun. Your lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Genetics play a huge part in who we are. But we also have free will.

Man is the control experiment of heredity and environment; and since his heredity controls him, he tries to control his environment.

Heredity proposes and development disposes.

They say your genetics are going to set your direction regardless of what happens, but I think there's more to it than that.

Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything.

So no, it's not all in the genes, but what isn't in the genes isn't in the family environment either. It can't be explained in terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents.

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

Genes can't possibly explain all of what makes us what we are.

Character, I am sure, lies in the genes.

I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.

Genes are not simple triggers. No one is hardwired to commit murder or any other crime. Our actions are always the result of stupendously complex gene-environment interactions, and environment is likely to remain the more important influence by far.

If someone's liver doesn't work, we blame it on the genes; if someone's brain doesn't work properly, we blame the school. It's actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don't want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true.

It's an important point to realize that the genetic programming of our lives is not fully deterministic. It is statistical - it is in any animal merely statistical - not deterministic.

I'm pretty sure there is some genetic component towards intelligence.

Your genetics is not your destiny.

If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation.

It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all.

I don't believe in predestination - except for genetic predilections.

Do we make ourselves into what we become or is it built into our genes, into the fate spun for us by whatever shapes events?

I never take credit for anything, because it's mostly genetic to my way of thinking. Even the need to work hard with some genetic talent you're given - the need to go out and develop it, and push hard to bring it to people.

I think there is such a thing as a bad seed that comes to flower in certain people. The danger with that theory is that we begin to look for those "troublemakers" early on and try to weed them out. That's very dangerous, because it could work against kids who are just routine troublemakers.