Quote

...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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert M. Sapolsky
Order
Concepts
Might
Mines
Need
Mine
Needs
Continue
Berate
Even
Friend
Remarked
Believe
Clear
Proved
Religious
Concept
Times
Useful

More quotes by Robert M. Sapolsky

Image
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
Image
We are just another primate but a very confused, malleable one.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
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
Image
I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
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
Image
It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who can do the most acts of random kindness.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
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
Image
The gigantic challenge is the magnitude of the individual differences in the optimal set point for good stress. For one person, it's doing something risky with your bishop in a chess game for someone else, it's becoming a mercenary in Yemen.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
What happened in the milliseconds before a behavior to cause it? That's in the neurobiological realm.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
We’ve evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
Perhaps most excitingly, we are uncovering the brain basis of our behaviors - normal, abnormal and in-between. We are mapping a neurobiology of what makes us us.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
The less it is possible that something can be, the more it must be.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
Naturally, things are more complicated - those groovy, pro-social effects of oxytocin apply to how we interact with in-group members.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you care about your longevity and health, be a socially affiliated baboon who is better than high-ranking ones at walking away from provocations.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
What happened during the minutes before? That's the realm of sensory stimuli of the nervous system.
Robert M. Sapolsky
Image
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
Image
An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart.
Robert M. Sapolsky