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

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
Aware
Animal
Self
Empathetic
Tends

More quotes by Frans de Waal

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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.
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We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.
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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.
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Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity.
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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.
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There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.
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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.
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There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.
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The development of family entities enables men to cooperate far more effectively. Instead of constantly competing for the women with other men, each man essentially has a partner assigned to him, one with whom he can establish a family.
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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.
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We, who think like animals living in small groups, must structure a global world. We believe in universal human rights and believe racism and war are wrong. On the other hand, it is our nature to be cooperative and loving almost exclusively with the members of the group to which we feel we belong.
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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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We would much rather blame nature for what we don't like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like.
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It is hard to get animals which normally pay little attention to each other to do things together. One can teach dolphins to jump simultaneously out of the water precisely because they show similar behavior spontaneously, but try to make two domestic cats jump together and you will fail.
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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.
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The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh.
Frans de Waal