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Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.

Frans de Waal

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Frans de Waal
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 29
Ethologist
Non-Fiction Writer
Primatologist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Zoologist
Den Bosch
Frans B M de Waal
Frans B. M. de Waal
F. de Waal
Tendencies
Social
Humans

More quotes by Frans de Waal

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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.
Frans de Waal
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Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative.
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The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh.
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You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society.
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Most exotic animals are not particularly interested in people, which makes it hard to provoke them. Human-rearing gets them used to and sometimes imprinted on humans, which makes them potentially dangerous.
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The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.
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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
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I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.
Frans de Waal
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Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.
Frans de Waal
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Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal.
Frans de Waal
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The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically.
Frans de Waal
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I call the notion that we are nothing but killer apes the Beethoven fallacy. Beethoven was disorganized and messy, and yet his music is the epitome of order.
Frans de Waal
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Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock.
Frans de Waal
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There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.
Frans de Waal
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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
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Science is not inherently good.
Frans de Waal
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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
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Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.
Frans de Waal
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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
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I am personally not against keeping animals at zoos, as they serve a huge educational purpose, but treating them well and with respect seems the least we could do, and with 'we' I mean not just zoo staff, but most certainly also the public.
Frans de Waal