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“Our understanding of who we are, where we came from, how the world works, and what matters in life depends on partaking of the vast and ever-expanding store of knowledge. Though unlettered hunters, herders, and peasants are fully human, anthropologists often comment on their orientation to the present, the local, the physical. To be aware of one's country and its history, of the diversity of customs and beliefs across the globe and through the ages, of the blunders and triumphs of past civilizations, of the microcosms of cells and atoms and the macrocosms of planets and galaxies, of the ethereal reality of number and logic and pattern—such awareness truly lifts us to a higher plane of consciousness. It is a gift of belonging to a brainy species with a long history.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

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“Plato said that we are trapped inside a cave and know the world only through the shadows it casts on the wall. The skull is our cave, and mental representations are the shadows.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

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“There can be no question of which was the greatest era for culture; the answer has to be today, until it is superseded by tomorrow.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress