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Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday.

Robert M. Sapolsky

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Robert M. Sapolsky
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More quotes by Robert M. Sapolsky

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We are just another primate but a very confused, malleable one.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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We’ve evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Until you appreciate something crucial - It is incredibly easy to manipulate us as to who counts as an Us, who as a Them.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Most people who do a lot of exercise, particularly in the form of competitive athletics, have unneurotic, extraverted, optimistic personalities to begin with. (Marathon runners are exceptions to this.)
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Give lab rats oxytocin and, according to that meme, they get better at talking about their feelings and sing like Joan Baez.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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What happened in the milliseconds before a behavior to cause it? That's in the neurobiological realm.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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What happened during the minutes before? That's the realm of sensory stimuli of the nervous system.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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As long as experiencing your optimal level of good stress doesn't damage others, it's hard to objectively define where normal enjoyment of stimulation becomes adrenaline junkiehood.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Genes are important for understanding our behavior. Incredibly important - after all, they code for every protein pertinent to brain function, endocrinology, etc.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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But often, it's easier to resist temptation with distraction, or to be so inculcated in doing the right thing that it's automatic, outside the frontal cortex's portfolio - Then it isn't the harder thing, it's the only thing you can do.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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Importantly, rather than promoting aggression, testosterone promotes whatever is needed to maintain status when challenged.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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The frontal cortex is an incredibly interesting part of the brain - ours is proportionately bigger and/or more complex than in any other species.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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The regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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The most important point of [Susan] Fiske's work is that it provides a taxonomy for our differing feelings about different Thems - sometimes fear, sometimes ridicule, sometimes contemptuous pity, sometimes savagery.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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...I might continue to believe that there is no god even if it were proved that there is. A religious friend of mine once remarked that the concept of god is useful, because you can berate god during the bad times. But it is clear to me that I don't need to believe there is a god in order to berate him.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.
Robert M. Sapolsky
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If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.
Robert M. Sapolsky