“My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal polic...” — Steven Pinker Quote

My politics were pretty anarchistic until 1969 when the Montreal police went on strike. Within hours, mayhem and rioting broke out and the Mounties had to be called in to restore order. It instilled in me that one's convictions can be subjected to empirical test.

The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.

The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.

The great Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport had died years before I entered the program, but he had written an "Epistle to Thesis Writers" that was still being handed down from generation to generation of doctoral candidates. Allport tried to steer students away from the clutter and fog of professional prose and offered as a model an essay by a ten-year-old girl, who, he wrote, merited a higher degree "if not for the accuracy of her knowledge, then at least for the clarity of her diction":

Politics, where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act.