Frans de Waal quotes - page 3

Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal. (Frans de Waal)
Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position. View quote
Frans de Waal
Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other. It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant. View quote
Frans de Waal
Don't believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or by keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. View quote
Frans de Waal
Our societies are constructed around the interface between those two, so we need both actually. View quote
Frans de Waal
We would not be where we are today had our ancestors been socially aloof. What we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature. Too many economists and politicians model human society on the perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere projection. Like magicians, they first throw their ideological prejudices into the hat of nature, then pull them out by their very ears to show how much nature agrees with them. It's a trick for which we have fallen for too long. Obviously, competition is part of the picture, but humans can't live by competition alone. View quote
Frans de Waal
They give up trusting others, and conversely others give up trusting them. View quote
Frans de Waal
Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs. View quote
Frans de Waal
The term 'alpha female' originated in my field of animal behavior, but has acquired new meaning. It refers to women who are in charge, for example, by flirting and dating on their own terms. It is also used maliciously for a loud-mouthed, controlling woman who has no patience with deviating opinions. View quote
Frans de Waal
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. View quote
Frans de Waal
Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary. (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. View quote
Frans de Waal
Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it. View quote
Frans de Waal
If you look at national economies today, for example, the American economy, the European economy, the Indians, the Chinese, we're all tied together. If one of them sinks, the rest are going to sink with them and if one floats, the rest are lifted up. I find that very interesting. View quote
Frans de Waal
In 1879, American economist Francis Walker tried to explain why members of his profession were in such "bad odor amongst real people". He blamed it on their inability to understand why human behavior fails to comply with economic theory. We do not always act the way economists think we should, mainly because we're both less selfish and less rational than economists think we are. Economists are being indoctrinated into a cardboard version of human nature, which they hold true to such a degree that their own behavior has begun to resemble it. Psychological tests have shown that economics majors are more egoistic than the average college student. Exposure in class after class to the capitalist self-interest model apparently kills off whatever prosocial tendencies these students have to begin with. They give up trusting others, and conversely others give up trusting them. Hence the bad odor. View quote
Frans de Waal
If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships. View quote
Frans de Waal