216 Quotes by Frans de Waal

"I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology."

"I have often noticed how primate groups in their entirety enter a similar mood. All of a sudden, all of them are playful, hopping around. Or all of them are grumpy. Or all of them are sleepy and settle down. In such cases, the mood contagion serves the function of synchronizing activities."

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

"You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society."

"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."

"Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn’t share their beliefs."

"Life goes on, as it should, but individuals are unique."

"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."

"There are lots of wonderful cognitive adaptations out there that we don’t have or need. This is why ranking cognition on a single dimension is a pointless exercise. Cognitive evolution is marked by many peaks of specialization. The ecology of each species is key. The."

"I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choice."