Best quotes by Steven Pinker on Violence

Checkout quotes by Steven Pinker on Violence

• ‟ Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.

  - Steven Pinker
  

• ‟ I think that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years, because it was built into its ideology - that progress comes through class struggle, often violent.

  - Steven Pinker
  

• ‟ Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.

  - Steven Pinker
  

• ‟ People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely.

  - Steven Pinker
  

• ‟ Probably Hobbes got it right when he said that a leviathan, a third party with a monopoly on the use of legitimate use of force in a territory, might be among the biggest violence reduction techniques ever invented.

  - Steven Pinker
  

• ‟ If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important.

  - Steven Pinker
  

• ‟ With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

  - Steven Pinker