Blank Slate Quotes

“One of the strangest things is the act of creation.

You are faced with a blank slate—a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument.

You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena.

And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form.

It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor’s tool onto the surface of the wood or marble.

You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing.

You have glimpsed the divine.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“I’ve often wondered how the term “'New Atheism”' gained such currency. It is a misnomer. There is nothing new about nonbelief. All of us, without exception, are born knowing nothing of God or gods, and acquire notions of religion solely through interaction with others – or, most often, indoctrination by others, an indoctrination usually commencing well before we can reason. Our primal state is, thus, one of nonbelief. The New Atheists (most prominently Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens) have, in essence, done nothing more than try to bring us back to our senses, to return us to a pure and innate mental clarity.”
― Jeffrey Tayler

“...this cryptic game of hide-and-seek is what makes it one of the greatest historical mysteries. So many of the symbols can be interpreted in so many different ways, there's always the possibility that all we're really looking at is a blank slate onto which anything can be read.”
― Brad Meltzer, History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

“Education is neither writing on a blank slate nor allowing the child's nobility to come into flower. Rather, education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn to walk, talk, recognize objects, or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding, or remembering dates in history. They do have to go to school to learn written language, arithmetic, and science, because those bodies of knowledge and skill were invented too recently for any species-wide knack for them to have evolved.”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

“Philosophers who have denied that there are any innate ideas probably meant only that all ideas were copies of our impressions. [W]hat is meant by ‘innate’? If ‘innate’ is equivalent to ‘natural’, then all the perceptions and ideas of the mind must be granted to be innate or natural, in whatever sense we take the latter word, whether in opposition to what is uncommon, what is artificial, or what is miraculous. If innate means ‘contemporary with our birth’, the dispute seems to be frivolous—there is no point in enquiring when thinking begins, whether before, at, or after our birth.”
― David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“Because much of the content of education is not cognitively natural, the process of mastering it may not always be easy and pleasant, notwithstanding the mantra that learning is fun. Children may be innately motivated to make friends, acquire status, hone motor skills, and explore the physical world, but they are not necessarily motivated to adapt their cognitive faculties to unnatural tasks like formal mathematics. A family, peer group, and culture that ascribe high status to school achievement may be needed to give a child the motive to persevere toward effortful feats of learning whose rewards are apparent only over the long term.”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

“Even thinking about the approaching blank slate of a new year causes a twang of anticipation to thrum through her body. New day planner. New set of notebooks. New goals. New dreams. On New Year’s Day, anything feels possible.”
― Julia McKay, The Holiday Honeymoon Switch

“My future was a blank slate and only I could write on it.”
― Carter Quinn, Fire & Rain

“Between the percussion of the musical raindrops and the rhythmic swipe of wipers across the windshield, I fall into a hypnotic state, thinking nothing. I'm a blank slate. A refreshing simplicity that has eluded me for months.”
― Dave Cenker, Second Chance