Steven Pinker

The world is not a static place, but a dynamic system of change and progress.

The human capacity for moral reasoning is a powerful force for justice.

The mind is not a blank slate, but a complex system of innate predispositions and learned experiences.

The world is not a zero-sum game. We can all thrive.

The human capacity for love is a powerful force for connection.

The mind is not a general-purpose learning machine, but a collection of specialized modules that are designed to solve specific problems.

Language is not just a system of symbols, but a window into the human mind.

The greatest hope for humanity is our ability to reason and to learn from our mistakes.

The world is not a place of inevitable decline, but a place of constant progress.

The human capacity for compassion is a powerful force for good in the world.

We did not evolve to be happy, but to survive and reproduce.

The historical decline of violence is an enigma that has puzzled social scientists for decades.

The Enlightenment principle that we can apply reason and sympathy to enhance human flourishing may seem obvious, but it is not.

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or solve the algebra problems. Rather, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains.

The Blank Slate - the idea that the human mind has no innate traits - is a doctrine that denies human nature.

Progress is a noun.

Human nature is not our enemy; it is our essence.

The mind is a neural computer, fitted by natural selection with combinatorial algorithms for causal and probabilistic reasoning about plants, animals, objects, and people.

Violence has declined over human history, and today we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

Reason is non-negotiable.