Whenever you speak to someone, you are presuming the two of you have a certain degree of familiarity - which your words might alter. So every sentence has to do two things at once: convey a message and continue to negotiate that relationship.


Steven Pinker

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All of us have a theory about human nature.
STEVEN PINKER
But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.
STEVEN PINKER
To make changes you have to make some enemies, but you also have to be careful not too make too many...
STEVEN PINKER
Tom Hanks, who starred in 'The Da Vinci Code,' turns out to be related to a number of the hi...
STEVEN PINKER
People know there is a difference between what you do and what you accept. There is a difference bet...
STEVEN PINKER
Photography is a demanding action sport. The light can change so quickly. I often find myself sprint...
STEVEN PINKER
If crime is going down, you shouldn't be increasing resources for crime prevention. Or you shoul...
STEVEN PINKER
The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to o...
STEVEN PINKER
When it comes to correct English, there's no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum.
STEVEN PINKER
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical cla...
STEVEN PINKER
The main reason that violence correlates with low socioeconomic status today is that the elites and ...
STEVEN PINKER
The dominant theories of elite art and criticism in the 20th century grew out of a militant denial o...
STEVEN PINKER
In their book Warrior Lovers, an analysis of erotic fiction by women, the psychologist Cather...
STEVEN PINKER
Organisms are selected to deploy violence only in circumstances where the expected benefits outweigh...
STEVEN PINKER
Violence and religion have often gone together, but it's not a perfect correlation, and it doesn...
STEVEN PINKER
When people have different ideas about which of these four modes of interacting applies to a current...
STEVEN PINKER
cademics and intellectuals are culture vultures. In a gathering of today’s elite, it is perfectly ...
STEVEN PINKER
Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx...
STEVEN PINKER
The imposition of stigma is the commonest form of violence used in democratic societies.
R. A. PINKER
We are concerned with that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negati...
STEVEN BIKO
Most of us have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands ...
STEVEN PRESSFIELD
I'm very fond of the British cinema. I'm a big fan of Martin Campbell and Daniel Craig. I ac...
STEVEN BAUER
The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industr...
STEVEN LEVY
I think I look really weird with short hair. So I figured if I've got a mustache, I think it loo...
STEVEN ADAMS
The gift that has been given to me says much about our capacity for great compassion and generosity,...
STEVEN COJOCARU
Most of the kids that I meet in the street are serious hardened criminals that I meet in the street,...
STEVEN SEAGAL
No industry is immune and no occupation is safe. All of us need to begin to think in terms of our ow...
STEVEN PRESSFIELD
It is impossible to count the blessings I have received over my years at Microsoft. I am humbled by ...
STEVEN SINOFSKY
Courtney Love is a loose cannon. She says what she thinks. She's wild on the red carpet. You get...
STEVEN COJOCARU
Black Consciousness seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their ...
STEVEN BIKO
When I was on TV in the '80s, I wasn't thinking, 'There's a 10-year-old kid watching...
STEVEN WRIGHT
Thanks to decades of accumulated federal budget deficits and, more significantly, imprudent Medicare...
STEVEN RATTNER
I have an existential map; it has you are here written all over it.
STEVEN WRIGHT
Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. ...
STEVEN WRIGHT
'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do...
STEVEN SPIELBERG
Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is...
STEVEN SODERBERGH
I approached the bulk of my schoolwork as a chore rather than an intellectual adventure.
STEVEN CHU
Bloated budgets are ruining Hollywood - these pictures are squeezing all the other types of movies o...
STEVEN SPIELBERG
The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded wit...
STEVEN BOCHCO
I was born with this. It's a hereditary genetic condition. This is something you can go your who...
STEVEN COJOCARU
I think there is a way to be formal and elegant and classy, but more modern. Brad Pitt has been chan...
STEVEN COJOCARU
I mean, as long as it doesn't have a bra attached, guys can take a risk and wear stylish things ...
STEVEN TYLER
Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. ...
STEVEN WRIGHT
If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you str...
STEVEN WRIGHT
A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space...
STEVEN WRIGHT