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The sin of ingratitude may not have made the Top Seven, but according to Dante it consigns the sinners to the ninth circle of Hell, and that’s where post-1960s intellectual culture may find itself because of its amnesia for the conquerors of disease.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Public opinion researchers call it the Optimism Gap.3 For more than two decades, through good times and bad, when Europeans were asked by pollsters whether their own economic situation would get better or worse in the coming year, more of them said it would get better, but when they were asked about their country’s economic situation, more of them said it would get worse.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

here is a shocker: The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being. Here is a second shocker: Almost no one knows about it.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

As we care about more of humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

The deepest is a bias that has been summarized in the slogan “Bad is stronger than good.”21 The idea can be captured in a set of thought experiments suggested by Tversky.22 How much better can you imagine yourself feeling than you are feeling right now? How much worse can you imagine yourself feeling?

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

to look at data showing that violence has gone down and say “Violence has gone down” is to describe a fact. To look at data showing that violence has gone down and say “Violence has gone up” is to be delusional. To ignore data on violence and say “Violence has gone up” is to be a know-nothing.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

a 2016 poll found that a large majority of Americans follow news about ISIS closely, and 77 percent agreed that “Islamic militants operating in Syria and Iraq pose a serious threat to the existence or survival of the United States,” a belief that is nothing short of delusional.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Far from being better informed, heavy newswatchers can become miscalibrated.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

people estimate the probability of an event or the frequency of a kind of thing by the ease with which instances come to mind.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren’t built in a day, and as they unfold, they will be out of sync with the news cycle. The peace researcher John Galtung pointed out that if a newspaper came out once every fifty years, it would not report half a century of celebrity gossip and political scandals. It would report momentous global changes such as the increase in life expectancy.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

In almost every year from 1992 through 2015, an era in which the rate of violent crime plummeted, a majority of Americans told pollsters that crime was rising.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Communities can thereby come up with rules that allow true beliefs to emerge from the rough-and-tumble of argument, such as that you have to provide reasons for your beliefs, you’re allowed to point out flaws in the beliefs of others, and you’re not allowed to forcibly shut people up who disagree with you. Add in the rule that you should allow the world to show you whether your beliefs are true or false, and we can call the rules science. With the right rules, a community of less than fully rational thinkers can cultivate rational thoughts.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

the desire to be right can collide with a second desire, to know the truth, which is uppermost in the minds of bystanders to an argument who are not invested in which side wins.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

People demonize those they disagree with, attributing differences of opinion to stupidity and dishonesty. For every misfortune they seek a scapegoat. They see morality as a source of grounds for condemning rivals and mobilizing indignation against them.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided one in 1859, it was reasonable to think they were the handiwork of a divine designer—one of the reasons, I suspect, that so many Enlightenment thinkers were deists rather than outright atheists. Darwin and Wallace made the designer unnecessary.

— Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker