A Quote by Steven Pinker

Journalists say that when a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news ... Thanks to the mathematics of combinatorics, we will never run out of news.

Steven Pinker

Quote Topics

Bites Dog Dog Bite Journalists Man Mathematics Never News Out Run Say Thanks Will

Quote Author

Steven Pinker
Canadian - Scientist
Born: September 18, 1954

When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news.

Charles A. Dana

Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.

Daniel Dennett

That's not news! When a shark comes out of the water, walks into a 7-11, and bites you in the ass, then it's news!

Carlos Mencia

I think we - "we," meaning the media - have generally caused Americans to consume news in smaller, less contextualized bites. I think we have sugar-coated the news. I think we have provided news that is consumable, at the expense of news that is more important. I think we have created a world in which extreme views push out moderate views.

Ali Velshi

I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. ...If people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news.

Andy Warhol

I try to put myself in the shoes of people in the news. I'm in the news myself quite a lot. But there's many days I give thanks I'm not in the news and the news that's out there.

Rush Limbaugh

Strange medical news from Pakistan: A man had a successful organ transplant with a dog. They gave the man a dog's organ. In a related story today, Keith Richards was seen chasing a mailman.

Craig Kilborn

The phone's never far away. The TV's always on. We are constantly on the news cycle; either watching the news, making the news, talking about the news.

S.E. Cupp

In the future, airplanes will be flown by a dog and a pilot. And the dog's job will be to make sure that if the pilot tries to touch any of the buttons, the dog bites him.

Scott Adams

If a dog is biting a black man, the black man should kill the dog, whether the dog is a police dog or a hound dog or any kind of dog. If a dog is fixed on a black man when that black man is doing nothing but trying to take advantage of what the government says is supposed to be his, then that black man should kill that dog or any two-legged dog who sets the dog on him.

Malcolm X

The weakness of cable news is that it chases its audience around. Your audience wants fast-paced, popular news. It needs real news. Cable news changes its stripes based on audience reaction. Viewers are reacting well to breaking news? You probably do more breaking news than you need to. The struggle is building something so that people will come to you, as opposed to constantly changing what you are because you're unsure of where the audience is.

Ali Velshi

The good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that's who She thinks we all are.

Alice Walker

If you watch a news channel, you wouldn't then say that that person who's watching the news channel thinks everything that the news channel puts out. You wouldn't think that.

Tennys Sandgren

To restate an old law - when a man bites a fish, that's good, but when a fish bites a man, that's bad. This is one way of saying it's all right if man kills an animal, but if an animal attacks man, the act is reprehensible.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets, With a third dog one of the two dogs meets; With angry teeth he bites him to the bone, And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.