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The moralistic fallacy is that what is good is found in nature. It lies behind the bad science in nature-documentary voiceovers: lions are mercy-killers of the weak and sick, mice feel no pain when cats eat them, dung beetles recycle dung to benefit the ecosystem and so on.

— Steven Pinker

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Nature

More quotes by Steven Pinker

Status is the public knowledge that you possess assets that would allow you to help others if you wished to.

How the Mind Works (1997)

Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players."

How the Mind Works (1997)

As an experimental psychologist, I have been trained not to believe anything unless it can be demonstrated in the laboratory on rats or sophomores.

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (1999)

Logicians tell us that a system of ideas containing a contradiction can be used to deduce any statement whatsoever, no matter how absurd.

I predict it will come to be seen as a turning point in the history of psychology.

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Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body.

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Steven Pinker (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.