“Pessimism is so reflexively expected of an intellectual that the way to flaunt your sophistication is to wear a long face.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
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Progress consists of deploying knowledge to allow all of humankind to flourish in the same way that each of us seeks to flourish.
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About this quote
Meaning
Pinker is offering a definition of progress that is both practical and moral. It is not simply about inventing new technologies or accumulating wealth for its own sake. The real measure of advancement, he argues, is whether the benefits of human knowledge and capability are extended to everyone, not just a privileged few. The phrase echoes a broadly humanist conviction: that whatever kind of flourishing individuals pursue for themselves, a just and progressive society works to make that same possibility available to all people.
Context
This line comes from Enlightenment Now, Pinker's 2018 case for reason, science, and humanism as the foundations of human advancement. The book marshals extensive data on improvements in health, education, poverty, and safety to argue that the world, despite its problems, has genuinely gotten better. The quote sits within his broader argument that Enlightenment values are not merely philosophical abstractions but the driving engine behind tangible improvements in human life. He consistently ties the application of knowledge to outcomes that matter for ordinary people.
About the author
Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist who has taught at major research universities in the United States and written widely read books on language, the mind, and human progress. He approaches large humanistic questions with empirical methods, drawing on psychology, history, and statistics. His work tends to challenge pessimistic narratives about the modern world, and he has become closely associated with defending a data-grounded form of optimism rooted in Enlightenment principles.
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