Frans de Waal Quotes

To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us.

The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?

The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice.

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.

The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.

We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.

Robin Hood had it right.Humanity's deepest wish is to spread the wealth.

You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions.

The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures.

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.

The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically.

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!

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.

Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative.

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.

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.

Socialism cannot function, because its economic reward structure is contrary to human nature.

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.

We are by far the most contradictory of all primates. An animal with this much internal conflict has never lived on this earth.

There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.

We would much rather blame nature for what we don't like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like.

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.

You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. Of course, I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.

Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.