Top 100 Frans De Waal Quotes
#1. The whole reason people fill their homes with furry carnivores and not with, say, iguanas and turtles, is because mammals offer something no reptile ever will. They give affection, they want affection, and respond to our emotions the way we do to theirs.
Frans De Waal
#2. Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature.
Frans De Waal
#3. Rather than reflecting an immutable human nature, morals are closely tied to the way we organize ourselves.
Frans De Waal
#4. Darwin wasn't just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes - he didn't go far enough. We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.
Frans De Waal
#5. I was born in Den Bosch, where the painter Hieronymus Bosch named himself after. And so I've always been very fond of this painter who lived and worked in the 15th century.
Frans De Waal
#6. Lorenz was the charismatic, flamboyant thinker - he didn't conduct a single statistical analysis in his life - while Tinbergen did the nitty-gritty of actual data collection.
Frans De Waal
#7. When humans behave murderously, such as inflicting senseless slaughter of innocents in warfare, we like to blame it on some dark, 'animalistic' instinct.
Frans De Waal
#8. Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food.
Frans De Waal
#9. In the same way that humans have a "handy" intelligence, which we share with other primates, elephants may have a "trunky" one. There
Frans De Waal
#10. Werner Heisenberg put it, "what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." Heisenberg, a German physicist, made this observation regarding quantum mechanics, but it holds equally true for explorations of the animal
Frans De Waal
#11. If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, ... a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.
Frans De Waal
#12. They were generally run by young men who mocked authority and preached egalitarianism yet had no qualms about ordering everyone else around and stealing their comrades' girlfriends.
Frans De Waal
#13. I think the sense of fairness in humans is very strongly developed, and that's why we react so strongly to all the bonuses received by Wall Street executives. We want to know why they deserve these benefits.
Frans De Waal
#15. Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.
Frans De Waal
#16. If one bird foraging in a flock on the ground suddenly takes off, all other birds will take off immediately after, before they even know what's going on. The one who stays behind may be prey.
Frans De Waal
#17. There are many reasons for kindness, and religion is just one of them.
Frans De Waal
#18. One thing bothered me as a student. In the 1960s, human behavior was totally off limits for the biologist. There was animal behavior, then there was a long time nothing, after which came human behavior as a totally separate category best left to a different group of scientists.
Frans De Waal
#19. Moreover, not unlike presidential candidates who hold babies up in the air as soon as the cameras are rolling, male chimps vying for power develop a sudden interest in infants, which they hold and tickle in order
Frans De Waal
#20. Dog owners who stare into their pet's eyes experience a rapid increase in oxytocin - a neuropeptide involved in attachment and bonding. Exchanging gazes full of empathy and trust, we enjoy a special relationship with the dog.42
Frans De Waal
#21. I'm personally a nonbeliever, so I'm struggling with if we really need religion.
Frans De Waal
#22. A species's cognition is generally as good as what it needs for its survival.
Frans De Waal
#23. The evolutionary struggle for survival is really a self-serving series of blows and stabs, and yet it can lead to extremely social animals like dolphins, wolves or, for that matter, primates.
Frans De Waal
#24. Religion looms as large as an elephant in the United States, to the point that being nonreligious is about the biggest handicap a politician running for office can have, bigger than being gay, unmarried, thrice married, or black.
Frans De Waal
#25. Human reflection is chronically overrated, though, and we now suspect that our own reaction to food poisoning is in fact similar to that of rats. Garcia's findings forced comparative psychology to admit that evolution pushes cognition around, adapting it to the organism's needs.
Frans De Waal
#26. The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh.
Frans De Waal
#27. To neglect the common ground with other primates, and to deny the evolutionary roots of human morality, would be like arriving at the top of a tower to declare that the rest of the building is irrelevant, that the precious concept of "tower" ought to be reserved for the summit.
Frans De Waal
#28. But those stories inspire observations and experiments that do help us sort out what's going on. The science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov reportedly once said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny.
Frans De Waal
#29. In a world divided by chimpophiles and bonobophiles, we all had a good laugh when Stephen peeled his banana. (62)
Frans De Waal
#30. Perhaps it's just me, but I am wary of any persons whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior.
Frans De Waal
#31. In 1952 the father of Japanese primatology, Kinji Imanishi, first
Frans De Waal
#32. We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off.
Frans De Waal
#33. Imagine you're a writer, and you have decided to offer your readers a firsthand account of the politically correct primate, the idol of the left, known for its "gay" relations, female supremacy, and pacific lifestyle. Your focus is the bonobo: a close relation of the chimpanzee. You
Frans De Waal
#34. If faith makes people buy an entire package of myths and values without asking too many questions, scientists are only slightly better.
Frans De Waal
#35. The kingmaker. He regained both prestige and fresh mating opportunities.
Frans De Waal
#36. Not unlike Lorenz's emphasis on knowing the whole animal, Imanishi urged us to empathize with the species under study. We need to get under its skin, he said, or as we would nowadays put it, try to enter its Umwelt.
Frans De Waal
#37. True empathy is not self-focused but other-oriented. Instead of making humanity the measure of all things, we need to evaluate other species by what they are.
Frans De Waal
#38. Would anyone test the memory of human children by throwing them into a swimming pool to see if they remember where to get out? Yet
Frans De Waal
#39. Denmark has incredibly low crime rates, and parents feel that what a child needs most is frisk luft, or fresh air. The
Frans De Waal
#40. Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.
Frans De Waal
#41. It wasn't God who introduced us to morality; rather, it was the other way around. God was put into place to help us live the way we felt we ought to.
Frans De Waal
#42. If you look at national economies today, for example, the American economy, the European economy, the Indians, the Chinese, we're all tied together. If one of them sinks, the rest are going to sink with them and if one floats, the rest are lifted up. I find that very interesting.
Frans De Waal
#43. Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal.
Frans De Waal
#45. Empathy as a complex emotion is different. It requires awareness of the other person's feelings and of one's own reactions. The appropriate reaction may not be to cry when another person cries, but to reassure them, or even to leave them alone.
Frans De Waal
#46. There are beautiful examples of art done by chimpanzees in human care.
Frans De Waal
#47. Most men probably wouldn't want to live the lives of bonobos. They're constantly clinging to their mothers' apron strings. They lack the ability to make decisions about their own fates, something that we and male chimpanzees practically consider our birthright.
Frans De Waal
#48. Empathy probably started out as a mechanism to improve maternal care. Mammalian mothers who were attentive to their young's needs were more likely to rear successful offspring.
Frans De Waal
#49. One can take the ape out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the ape.
Frans De Waal
#50. Cognition is the mental transformation of sensory input into knowledge about the environment and the flexible application of this knowledge.
Frans De Waal
#51. Below I describe two examples, one concerning self-awareness and the other culture, both concepts that, whenever mentioned in relation to animals, still send some scholars through the roof. Armchair
Frans De Waal
#52. I consider dogmatism a far greater threat than religion per se.
Frans De Waal
#53. Ethology's focus was on behavior that develops naturally in all members of a given species.
Frans De Waal
#54. When we see a disciplined society, there is often a social hierarchy behind it. This hierarchy, which determines who can eat or mate first, is ultimately rooted in violence.
Frans De Waal
#55. If both parties have a stake in the other, the chances of them killing each other are going to be reduced.
Frans De Waal
#56. Charles Darwin himself had written a whole tome about the parallels between human and animal emotional expressions.
Frans De Waal
#57. There's a long tradition in Western thought that humans are not shackled by biology, whereas animals are pure instinct machines.
Frans De Waal
#58. If you want to design a successful human society, you need to know what kind of animal we are. Are we a social animal or a selfish animal? Do we respond better when we're solitary or living in a group?
Frans De Waal
#59. At the time, science had declared humans unique, since we were so much better at identifying faces than any other primate. No one seemed bothered by the fact that other primates had been tested mostly on human faces rather than those of their own kind.
Frans De Waal
#60. As far as the environment is concerned, I am becoming pessimistic because I do not see anybody stepping up and taking the long view approach. It seems like we're stuck in a tragedy of the commons where everyone is trying to contribute as little as possible to get out of this situation.
Frans De Waal
#61. Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their way.
Frans De Waal
#62. The fact that the apes exist and that we can study them is extremely important and makes us reflect on ourselves and our human nature. In that sense alone, you need to protect the apes.
Frans De Waal
#63. The intuitive connection children feel with animals can be a tremendous source of joy. The unconditional love received from pets, and the lack of artifice in the relationship, contrast sharply with the much trickier dealings with members of their own species.
Frans De Waal
#64. If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy.
Frans De Waal
#65. After World War II it was decided that, in order to prevent the Germans and the French from having another war, it would be better to tie them together into one economic pact so they would invest in each other and have mutual stakes. Until now, that has worked to prevent warfare between the two.
Frans De Waal
#66. A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures but just goes ahead and attacks.
Frans De Waal
#67. I felt like a toilet frog during the last three decades of the preceding century. (38)
Frans De Waal
#68. Ironically, torture requires empathy, too, in the sense that one cannot deliberately inflict pain without realizing what is painful.
Frans De Waal
#69. Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative.
Frans De Waal
#70. You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society.
Frans De Waal
#71. I was too restless as a boy to sit through an entire mass. It was akin to aversion training. I looked at it like a puppet show with a totally predictable story line. The only aspect I really liked was the music.
Frans De Waal
#72. Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.
Frans De Waal
#73. There are so many ways to account for negative outcomes that it is safer to doubt one's methods before doubting one's subjects.
Frans De Waal
#74. En route to such trees and get up before dawn, something they normally hate to do.
Frans De Waal
#75. The initial animosity between divergent approaches can be overcome if we realize that each has something to offer that the other lacks. We may weave them together into a new whole that is stronger than the sum of its parts.
Frans De Waal
#76. Those who exclaim that "animals are not people" tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. To minimize the complexity of animal behavior without doing the same for human behavior erects an artificial barrier.
Frans De Waal
#77. In other words, both macaques and rats volunteer for tests only when they feel confident, suggesting that they know their own knowledge.
Frans De Waal
#78. Chimps don't have language. Humans actively instruct others about how things should be done. Chimpanzees probably pick up cultural traditions by observation.
Frans De Waal
#79. Sultan would first jump or throw things at the banana or drag humans by the hand toward it in the hope that they'd help him out, or at least be willing to serve as a footstool.
Frans De Waal
#80. When we are bad, we are worse than any primate that I know. And when we are good, we are actually better and more altruistic than any primate that I know.
Frans De Waal
#81. It is said that man is wolf to man. I find this very unfair to wolves.
Frans De Waal
#82. People want to work with somebody who feels shame, who worries about the perceptions of others. Dishonesty is something we don't like in others.
Frans De Waal
#83. The thinking is that we started evolving language not by speaking but by gesturing.
Frans De Waal
#84. If there is any form of contagion that is adaptive, it is the immediate response to the fear of others. If others are fearful, there may be good reason for you to be fearful too.
Frans De Waal
#85. In other words, what is salient to us - such as our own facial features - may not be salient to other species.
Frans De Waal
#86. Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.
Frans De Waal
#87. In Africa, we have the bush meat trade, which means that, on a very large scale, animals are being killed in the forests and sold in the cities as a luxury food.
Frans De Waal
#88. Status competition and the opportunistic making and breaking of alliances that marks political strife. For this, we have to go to the males, also in the elephant. For
Frans De Waal
#90. Closeness to animals creates the desire to understand them, and not just a little piece of them, but the whole animal. It makes us wonder what goes on in their heads even though we fully realize that the answer can only be approximated.
Frans De Waal
#91. But surely the simplicity of an explanation is no necessary criterion of its truth.17
Frans De Waal
#92. Drosophila has long been our main workhorse in genetics, yielding insight in the relation between chromosomes and genes.
Frans De Waal
#93. Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity.
Frans De Waal
#94. Animals should be given a chance to express their natural behavior.
Frans De Waal
#95. Personally, I think it is possible to build a society that is moral on a nonreligious basis, but the jury is still out on that.
Frans De Waal
#96. Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.
Frans De Waal
#97. Conventions are often surrounded with the solemn language of morality, but in fact they have little to do with it.
Frans De Waal
#98. This book [...] demonstrates something we had already suspected on the grounds of the close connection between apes and man: that the social organization of chimpanzees is almost too human to be true.
Frans De Waal
#99. Very long ago our ancestors had moral systems. Our current institutions are only a couple of thousand years old, which is really not old in the eyes of a biologist.
Frans De Waal
#100. Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position.
Frans De Waal
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