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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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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
Around
Morality
Live
Ought
Way
Wasn
Help
Rather
Felt
Helping
Place
Introduced
More quotes by Frans de Waal
Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food.
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
Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.
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
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
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
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
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
There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.
Frans de Waal
Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal.
Frans de Waal
I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.
Frans de Waal
Science is not inherently good.
Frans de Waal
Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.
Frans de Waal
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
Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.
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
Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity.
Frans de Waal
The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.
Frans de Waal
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
There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.
Frans de Waal
