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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?

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
Must
Animal
Chimpanzees
Eyes
Assured
Eye
Straight
Inspirational
Animals
Back
Intelligent
Look
Personality
Self
Deep
Looks
Motivational
Chimpanzee

More quotes by 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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The chimpanzees could tear me apart in no time. They're many times stronger than we are.
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
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Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature.
Frans de Waal
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I describe in 'Chimpanzee Politics' how the alpha male needs broad support to reach the top spot. He needs some close allies and he needs many group members to be on his side.
Frans de Waal
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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.
Frans de Waal
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When we are bad, we are worse than any primate that I know. And when we are good, we are actually better and more altruistic than any primate that I know.
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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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.
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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Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity.
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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Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative.
Frans de Waal
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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.
Frans de Waal
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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.
Frans de Waal
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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
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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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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.
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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Bonobo studies started in the '70s and came to fruition in the '80s. Then in the '90s, all of a sudden, boom, they ended because of the warfare in the Congo. It was really bad for the bonobo and ironic that people with their warfare were preventing us from studying the hippies of the primate world.
Frans de Waal