The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
Interpretation
Life's complexities require trade-offs, such as the skills we gain in youth versus the challenges we face later.
This quote by Steven Pinker suggests that the difficulties we encounter as learners in language and other skills during adulthood reflect the remarkable adaptability and genius we exhibited as infants. It underscores the idea that each stage of life comes with its own challenges and benefits, highlighting the inevitable trade-offs that define our growth from youth to old age.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech on the journey of learning and growing throughout life.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
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.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.
I realised that the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it's been practised from the beginning. In other words, Islam has always been secular, and I had been totally ignorant of the fact.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves... It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.
Male domination is so rooted in our collective unconscious that we no longer even see it.
A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice.
The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me
Written language must be considered as a particular psychic reality. The book is permanent; it is an object in your field of vision. It speaks to you with a monotonous authority which even its author would not have. You are fairly obliged to read what is written.
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