87 Quotes by Robert M. Sapolsky

Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action.

You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.

Things that seem morally obvious and intuitive now weren’t necessarily so in the past; many started with nonconforming reasoning.

If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.

On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occurring when your cortex thinks an abstract thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is as real as a physical stressor.

Most people who do a lot of exercise, particularly in the form of competitive athletics, have unneurotic, extraverted, optimistic personalities to begin with. (Marathon runners are exceptions to this.)

Outgroups mocking the ingroup is a weapon of the weak, lessening the sting of subordination. But when an ingroup mocks an outgroup, it solidifies negative stereotypes and reifies the hierarchy.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.

Like so many other animals, we have an often-frantic need to conform, belong, and obey. Such conformity can be markedly maladaptive, as we forgo better solutions in the name of the foolishness of the crowd.