Steven Pinker on Rationality: Why It Matters
Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.
You need to know the reason you're there at that surgical table with a knife in your hand. You have to be clear that you are using these sophisticated tools (tools which can cause a lot of harm) to fundamentally and primarily help that entity, that child in front of you.
Diamonds are a miracle of nature, they are millions of years old, they survived a hazardous journey to the earth's surface and the discovery of them is an exciting moment. To see the rough diamond and then watch it come to life on the polisher's wheel with incredible fire and scintillation is incredibly inspiring.
Rape is one of the oldest weapons of war and it remains so to this day. For so long, it has been viewed as an 'unfortunate' side effect of war. But really, it is a tactic.
Space is a pretty scary place. Here on Earth, we're surrounded by nature and a nice blue sky. You don't realise that 16km above you, things start to go black…. 100km it's an inhospitable vacuum that will kill you in less than 60 seconds. Think how far we've come as humanity- we're a living species who have managed to escape our own planet.
I am in favour of quotas and targets. I think affirmative action works, and we've had affirmative action in the opposite direction for centuries. So sometimes we have to shock the system. We have to do it to normalise things, to get to a tipping point and then let the system just takes care of itself.
Ten in-depth articles distilling insights from over 550 interviews with the world's leading thinkers, creators, and changemakers.