The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.
Steven PinkerAfter their return from Babylon, the practice of human sacrifice died out among the Jews, but survived as an ideal in one of its break-away sects, which believed that God accepted the torture-sacrifice of an innocent man in exchange for not visiting a worse fate on the rest of humanity. The sect is called Christianity.
Steven PinkerMy 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.
Steven PinkerAs long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to genocide.
Steven Pinker