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Steven Pinker

Born: September 18, 1954 – Montreal, Quebec, Canada

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Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and public intellectual best known for his research on language, mind, and human nature. Notable for works such as "The Language Instinct," "How the Mind Works," and "Enlightenment Now," his books have received critical acclaim and advanced public understanding of psychology, cognition, and rational thought.

Biography & Author's Journey

Steven Arthur Pinker was born on September 18, 1954, in Montreal, Quebec, to an upper-middle-class, secular Jewish family that valued intellectual curiosity and debate. His parents—a lawyer and a high-school vice-principal—nurtured an environment of critical thinking, which Pinker credits with shaping his appetite for rigorous argument and exploration. He attended Dawson College before earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from McGill University in 1976, then pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University, completing his PhD in experimental psychology in 1979. From early on, Pinker’s academic focus was split between visual cognition—how humans perceive and imagine objects, faces, and spatial relations—and language acquisition. His doctoral work and early years as a professor at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard saw him grappling with foundational questions about the mind, eventually leading him to shift his focus decisively toward the science of language and cognitive development.

Quotes

Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry

-Enlightenment Now

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance

-21 Steven Pinker Quotes

The main cause of violence is not that we have evil urges that must be tamed by the forces of good, but that we often see violence as the best way to advance our interests

-21 Steven Pinker Quotes

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains

-21 Steven Pinker Quotes

Our brains were shaped by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness

-21 Steven Pinker Quotes

We will never have a perfect world, but it’s not overly romantic or naïve to work towards a better one

-21 Steven Pinker Quotes

Groups are not moral patients, only individuals are

-21 Steven Pinker Quotes

Language is an extraordinary gift: the ability to dispatch an infinite number of precisely structured thoughts from head to head by modulating exhaled breath

-Top 20 Steven Pinker Quotes

Parental love is not like bread that can be broken into pieces and split among many children. It’s more like a safety pin: it is either fastened or not

-21 Steven Pinker Quotes

Whatever its causes, the decline of violence, I think, has profound implications. It should force us to ask not just, 'Why is there war?' but also, 'Why is there peace?' Not just, 'What are we doing wrong?' but also, 'What have we been doing right?' Because we have been doing something right, and it sure would be good to find out what it is

-TED Talk: The surprising decline in violence

Popular Books

The better angels of our nature

Steven Pinker

How violence has declined over human history.

Sense of Style

Steven Pinker

A cognitive scientist's witty guide to clear writing, blending linguistics and psychology to improve your prose.

Enlightenment Now

Steven Pinker

The case for reason, science, and human progress.

The Blank Slate

Steven Pinker

Pinker challenges prevailing views on human nature, arguing that genetics significantly shape behavior, cognition, and personality traits.

Rationality

Steven Pinker

Pinker explores the power of reason, arguing humans are rational beings capable of overcoming biases to make better decisions.

The Stuff of Thought

Steven Pinker

A fascinating exploration of how language reveals the inner workings of the human mind and shapes our understanding of reality.