Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees … - Steven Pinker

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Translating Candide into tweets has really deepened my appreciation of his writing - it wouldn't work so well with nineteenth-century authors. Every single sentence in Voltaire seems to advance the story, and yet stand alone as a sound-bite.

Steven Pinker

Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?

Extraordinary, Fish, Human, Moon, Ocean, Tree

Same Author Quotes

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.

Activity, Believe, Magic, Neurophysiological, Psychology, Reason

Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and their children live longer.

Alcohol, Children, Intelligent, Live, People

I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Fragile, Giving, Life, Purpose, Realization

When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

Behavior, Children, Human, Mind, Thinking, War

In many Muslim countries, witchcraft is not only on the books as a crime, but is commonly prosecuted. In 2009, for example, Saudi Arabia convicted a man for carrying a phone booklet with characters in an alphabet from his native Eritrea, which the police interpreted as occult symbols. He was lashed three hundred times and imprisoned for more than three years.

Book, Carrying, Character, Country, Crime, Eritrea