A Quote by Steven Pinker

We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable? — © Steven Pinker
We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable?
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum, And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on, While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
Kids have *_____ never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable." "Because you are not fit to go there," I answered. "All sinners would be miserable in heaven.
The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede.
PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.
The Goal is not to have a warm, dry house, but to have a warm, dry house with a spirit to it.
We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.
Primate books are good for us. They remind us that we're primates, too. And the embarrassing primate books are best. Macachiavellian Intelligence is an excellently embarrassing primate book, and just the thing to make us blush and shuffle our feet.
But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses.
If a male primate is mean to a female primate, her whole family will come after him. We don't have that sort of accountability in industrial societies.
If you are happy, you are happy; nobody asks you why you are happy. Yes, if you are miserable, a question is relevant. If you are miserable, somebody can ask why you are miserable, and the question is relevant - because misery is against nature, something wrong is happening. When you are happy, nobody asks you why you are happy, except for a few neurotics. There are such people; I cannot deny the possibility.
There ain't no ticks like poly-ticks. Bloodsuckers all.
Men turn their faces to hell, and hope to get to heaven; why don't they walk into the horsepond, and hope to be dry?.
When I was living in Los Angeles, I always booked a moisturizing milk-and-honey massage the day before flying to Spain. It was heaven - I never got dry plane skin or felt stiff from sitting in one position.
So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?
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