Steven Pinker, a Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. As a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and bestselling author, he has explored everything from the mechanics of language to the arc of human history. His work is characterized by a commitment to data, a defense of Enlightenment ideals, and a data-driven optimism that stands in sharp contrast to the prevailing pessimism of our time.

Primary Sources:

On Progress, Reason, and the Enlightenment

These ideas, primarily from Enlightenment Now and The Better Angels of Our Nature, form the core of Pinker's public intellectual work.

  1. "The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being. And it is a demonstrable fact that the world is getting better, not worse." - Enlightenment Now. This is the central, data-backed thesis of his argument against widespread "progressophobia."
  2. "Reason is non-negotiable." - Enlightenment Now. Pinker argues that to even debate the value of reason, you must use reason, thereby proving its foundational importance.
  3. "Problems are inevitable. But problems are solvable." - Enlightenment Now. This is the optimistic, humanistic approach to challenges. We should not despair but rather apply our intelligence to find solutions.
  4. "The news is a systematically misleading way to understand the world." - Enlightenment Now. Because news focuses on events rather than trends, and bad events happen suddenly while good trends build slowly, the news will always make the world seem worse than it is.
  5. "Progress is not a matter of faith, but of fact." - Enlightenment Now. Pinker's optimism is not a personality trait; he argues it is the only conclusion that can be drawn from looking at long-term data on health, wealth, safety, and happiness.
  6. "Intellectuals hate progress. Intellectuals who call themselves 'progressive' really hate progress." - Enlightenment Now. A provocative critique of the academic and media tendency to focus on criticism and pessimism while ignoring massive gains in human welfare.
  7. "Science is not a dogma. It is a community of thinkers who are constantly trying to disprove each other's theories." - Enlightenment Now. This describes the self-correcting nature of science, which is the engine of human progress.
  8. "Humanism is the only worldview that is compatible with our modern understanding of science and the universe." - Enlightenment Now. It grounds morality in the goal of maximizing human flourishing in this life.
  9. "We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one. But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing." - Enlightenment Now.
  10. "The Enlightenment has worked. We are healthier, wealthier, freer, and happier than our ancestors." - Enlightenment Now.

On Violence and Human Nature

These concepts, from The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Blank Slate, revolutionized our understanding of historical violence and the innate qualities of the human mind.

  1. "Believe it or not—and I know that most people do not—violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence." - The Better Angels of Our Nature. This is the book's core, counter-intuitive thesis.
  2. "The myth of the Noble Savage—the idea that humans are naturally peaceful and corrupted by modern institutions—is one of the most destructive fallacies in modern thought." - The Blank Slate.
  3. "The doctrine of the Blank Slate, which holds that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be molded into any shape, has been devastating to our understanding of ourselves." - The Blank Slate.
  4. "Our minds are not blank slates. They are complex systems with an innate organization that has been shaped by natural selection." - The Blank Slate.
  5. "We have a moral instinct, a capacity for empathy, fairness, and self-control. These are our 'better angels.'" - The Better Angels of Our Nature.
  6. "We also have our inner demons: the circuits in our brains that allow for violence, tribalism, and dominance." - The Better Angels of Our Nature. History is the story of our better angels gaining the upper hand.
  7. "The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it on the scale of millennia, centuries, decades, and years." - The Better Angels of Our Nature.
  8. "Literacy, commerce, cosmopolitanism, and the gentle hand of government are all forces that have favored our better angels and pushed down violence." - The Better Angels of Our Nature.
  9. "Acknowledging human nature does not mean accepting the status quo. It is the first step toward improving the human condition." - The Blank Slate.
  10. "The availability heuristic—our tendency to judge the frequency of an event by the ease with which examples come to mind—is a major reason we get the world so wrong." - The Better Angels of Our Nature. We see violence on the news and assume it's more common than it is.

On Language and the Mind

From his foundational work in linguistics, particularly The Language Instinct, Pinker explains how language works and what it reveals about our brains.

  1. "Language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution." - The Language Instinct. This is his most famous linguistic idea—that language is a biological adaptation, not just a cultural invention.
  2. "The complexity of language, from the syntax of a sentence to the structure of a word, is one of the marvels of the natural world." - The Language Instinct.
  3. "Children do not learn language by imitating their parents. They create it anew." - The Language Instinct. This explains why children say things like "I goed" instead of "I went"—they are applying a grammatical rule, not just repeating what they've heard.
  4. "Language is a window into the human mind." - The Language Instinct. By studying how we talk, we can learn about how we think.
  5. "A verb is a 'thing' that happens. A noun is a 'thing' that is." - Pinker has a gift for explaining complex grammatical concepts in simple, intuitive terms.
  6. "The so-called rules of grammar are often just the stylistic preferences of a few nineteenth-century pedants."- The Sense of Style. A critique of prescriptive grammar rules that have no basis in how language actually works.
  7. "Language is a jewel in the crown of cognition." - The Language Instinct.

On Writing and Communication

From The Sense of Style, Pinker uses the science of language and mind to offer a modern, practical guide to clear and effective writing.

  1. "The main cause of incomprehensible prose is the Curse of Knowledge." - The Sense of Style. This is the difficulty of imagining what it is like for someone else not to know something that you know.
  2. "Classic style is the dominant model for good writing. The writer has seen something in the world, and is directing the reader's gaze so that they can see it too." - The Sense of Style.
  3. "The key to good writing is to be a visual thinker. Show, don't just tell." - The Sense of Style.
  4. "Write with a clear purpose. What do you want your readers to know, believe, or feel after they have finished reading?" - The Sense of Style.
  5. "Good writing is a matter of presenting the truth, not of just sounding important." - The Sense of Style. A critique of "academese" and "corporatese."
  6. "Read your prose aloud. The ear can detect awkwardness that the eye overlooks." - The Sense of Style.
  7. "Avoid clichés like the plague." - A self-aware example from The Sense of Style to illustrate the point.
  8. "The passive voice is not a grammatical error. It is a stylistic choice that has its uses, but is often overused by writers who are afraid to say who is doing what." - The Sense of Style.
  9. "Metaphor is not just a fancy way of talking. It is the basis of much of our understanding of the world." - The Sense of Style.

On Rationality and Critical Thinking

From his most recent book, Rationality, Pinker makes the case for why the tools of reason are essential for a functioning society and a fulfilling life.

  1. "Rationality ought to be the lodestar for everything we think and do." - Rationality.
  2. "Rationality is not the same as intelligence. It is a set of tools that can be learned and practiced." - Rationality.
  3. "The goal of rationality is not to be a perfect, emotionless robot. It is to use the best tools of reasoning to achieve your goals." - Rationality.
  4. "We are all susceptible to cognitive biases, but by learning about them, we can learn to counteract them." - Rationality.
  5. "The 'myside bias'—the tendency to favor information that confirms our existing beliefs—is one of the most powerful and dangerous of all cognitive biases." - Rationality.
  6. "Correlation does not imply causation. This may be the single most important lesson in all of statistics and critical thinking." - Rationality.
  7. "An anecdote is not data." - A common refrain in his work, emphasizing the need for statistical evidence over isolated stories.
  8. "Logic, probability, and critical thinking are a toolkit of cognitive techniques that can be used to pursue any goal." - Rationality.
  9. "A rational argument is one that can be laid out explicitly, and can be evaluated by others." - Rationality.
  10. "The world is not a morality play. It is a complex system of cause and effect." - A learning that cuts across his work.
  11. "Being rational is not about winning an argument. It is about arriving at the truth." - Rationality.
  12. "We have a moral obligation to be rational. Our beliefs affect others, and we have a duty to make sure they are well-founded." - Rationality.
  13. "The greatest enemy of reason is not emotion, but the lazy intuition that we are already in possession of the truth." - A theme from Rationality.
  14. "In a democracy, the public square should be a marketplace of ideas, where the best arguments, backed by evidence, win out." - A concluding thought that ties together his advocacy for reason, free speech, and progress.