When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is shy in personality but flamboyant in his philanthropy.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of connecting with interesting individuals while traveling and the contrast between personal demeanor and public contributions.
In this quote, Steven Pinker reflects on the value of meeting intriguing individuals during his travels, using his encounter with Paul Allen as an example. Pinker notes the dichotomy between Allen's reserved personality and his vibrant philanthropic efforts, suggesting that people can have multifaceted identities that may not always be visible at first glance.
In practice
This quote can be used in a travel blog to encourage readers to connect with locals during their journeys.
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.
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.
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.
My relationship with cats has saved me from a deadly and pervasive ignorance.
I don't think of Kurt as 'Kurt Cobain from Nirvana'. I think of him as 'Kurt'. It's something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.
She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as a woman judge men, not on the strength of their arguments, and not in their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, their strength of soul, their compassion, and... ah, this above all... their conversation.
Sex for pleasure, for fun, or even for building relationships is completely absent from our national conversation. Yet taking the joy out of sexuality is a surefire way to ensure not that young women won't have sex, but rather that they'll have it without pleasure.
There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.
Man can see his reflection in water only when he bends down close to it, and the heart of man, too, must lean down to the heart of his fellow; then it will see itself within his heart.
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