Steven Pinker Quotes
A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing has gone wrong yet' without looking for wood to knock?
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. Viking, 2007, p. 301.
Spinoza was one of the most feared intellectuals in human history—feared, that is, by the established power structures. Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
She actually tried all sorts of “witchcraft,” but her real crime was the murdering of other people in her rituals. She was arrested and died in jail. In Hungary, it was forbidden to speak her name aloud, and for many her name is still synonymous with evil.
He was an overt atheist; there were many non believers in Europe at the time but few were overt. He also wrote under the name of Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud.
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
