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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
Helping
Place
Introduced
Around
Morality
Live
Ought
Way
Wasn
Help
Rather
Felt

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We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.
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Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.
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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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As far as the environment is concerned, I am becoming pessimistic because I do not see anybody stepping up and taking the long view approach. It seems like we're stuck in a tragedy of the commons where everyone is trying to contribute as little as possible to get out of this situation.
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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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Studies of reconciliation in primates have demonstrated that if the relationship value increases between two parties they are more willing to make peace.
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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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Most men probably wouldn't want to live the lives of bonobos. They're constantly clinging to their mothers' apron strings. They lack the ability to make decisions about their own fates, something that we and male chimpanzees practically consider our birthright.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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The chimpanzees could tear me apart in no time. They're many times stronger than we are.
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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 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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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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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.
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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.
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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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