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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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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
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Chimpanzees
Politics
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Chimpanzee
More quotes by Frans de Waal
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
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
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
Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.
Frans de Waal
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
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
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.
Frans de Waal
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.
Frans de Waal
Studies of reconciliation in primates have demonstrated that if the relationship value increases between two parties they are more willing to make peace.
Frans de Waal
The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.
Frans de Waal
The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.
Frans de Waal
Science is not inherently good.
Frans de Waal
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
The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh.
Frans de Waal
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
I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.
Frans de Waal
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
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
There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.
Frans de Waal
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
