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Alison Gopnik Biography

Alison Gopnik (born June 16, 1955) is an American professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her work in the areas of cognitive and language development, specializing in the effect of language on thought, the development of a theory of mind, and causal learning. Her writing on psychology and cognitive science has appeared in Science, Scientific American, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, New Scientist, Slate and others. Her body of work also includes four books and over 100 journal articles.

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Alison Gopnik Quotes

Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society.

Attitude, Caring, Children, Toward

If parents are the fixed stars in the childs universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.

Childs, Fixed, Parent, Scorching, Sibling, Stars

We don't measure the quality of our other relationships by how well the other person turns out, for instance whether my husband is a better person after 10 years than he was when I first met him.

Husband, Met, Person, Quality, Turns, Years

We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they find themselves. What we need to do is to do more to help poor kids have such an environment.

Function, Growing Up, Help, Kids, Support, Thrive

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.

Baby, Children, Development, Marketing, Research And Development

Philosophers and psychologists have long puzzled over the question of how we know as much as we do despite our limited experiences. One way is to see how children learn. Another example is consciousness. The concept is usually explored by armchair academics. Looking at kids expands our conceptions of consciousness.

Children, Kids, Long, Way, Psychologists, Armchair

The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.

Keep, Real, Secret, Water, Whispering

We pass our values, ideas and moral character on to our children, but we do that knowing that our children are going to revise our knowledge and reshape their values. There's something very paradoxical and profound about being a parent as opposed to parenting. We put in all this effort and energy not so that we can shape a child of a particular sort, but so that all sorts of possibilities can happen in the future.

Character, Children, Parenting, Profound

Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.

Children, Music, Play, Specific, Teaching

Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.

Caring, Children, Dying, Good, Intrinsic

The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.

Exponential, Improvement, Radio, Telegraph

What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.

Teenager, Peers, Want, Social, Rewards

Instead of just saying, "I love my baby and I pick him up because he's adorable and it's so nice to cuddle with him," we practice attachment parenting. We let our children play outside and have age-appropriate freedoms and are labeled free-range parents.

Baby, Children, Let, Love, Nice, Parents

Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.

Baby, Childhood, Children, Fundamental, Mysterious, Part

We're in a culture where everything is either consumption or production, so child care is either a very, very bad-paying form of work or a very expensive luxury that you purchase. There isn't a good place in our picture of the world for what caregiving is about. Even teenage babysitters have sort of disappeared from the scene.

Children, Culture, Disappeared, Expensive, Sort, Teenage

We fear death so profoundly, not because it means the end of our body, but because it means the end of our consciousness - better to be a spirit in Heaven than a zombie on Earth.

Body, Death, Heaven, Mean, Profoundly, Zombie

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

Imagine, Mother, Play, Technology

We don't wife our husbands and we don't child our parents.

Child, Children, Husband, Husbands, Parents, Wife

I'm culturally Jewish but, like most scientists, an atheist: I don't believe there's a God or supernatural world. Buddhism offers guidance on what to do in a world without God: It opines that truly being present in the world‚ experiencing and hanging out with your loved ones, provides all the significance you could want.

Atheist, Believe, Buddhism, Opines, Significance

One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.

Childhood, Features, Human, Humans, Long, Unusually

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