Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another. Steven Pinker
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary. - Oscar Wilde

  2. We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don't even matter, while all that... - C. Joybell C.

  3. I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with. - Fannie Flagg

  4. That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable. - Deb Caletti

  5. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. - David Foster Wallace

More Quotes By Steven Pinker
  1. An oversupply of national sentiment is not the problem in Somalia. The problem is a lack of it. The problem is an oversupply of sub-sub-clannish attitude.

  2. Of course everybody's thinking evolves over time. Only dead people cease learning, and I am not certified dead yet. So I am still learning.

  3. Over the years, I've come to recognize that democratization in Ethiopia is not just a matter of choice. It's a matter of national survival. I am deeply convinced that we either democratize and have a good chance of surviving, or if we fail to do...

  4. Some people think African states cannot be trusted with the cookie jar. But there are absolutely good NGOs who have this feeling of human solidarity and who also recognize that their work can only be supplementary to the government.

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