Frans de Waal Quotes

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we'd known the bonobo first and the chimpanze...

Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks ...

Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to s...

[T]he term 'nonhuman' grates on me, since it lumps millions of species together by an absence, as if...

The initial animosity between divergent approaches can be overcome if we realize that each has somet...

Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to c...

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanze...

Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the ‘God is dead’ phrase was interested in the sources of ...

If faith makes people buy an entire package of myths and values without asking too many questions, s...

We have a tendency to describe the human condition in lofty terms, such as a quest for freedom or st...

It is said that man is wolf to man. I find this very unfair to wolves.

Our societies probably work best if they mimic as closely as possible the small-scale communities of...

The intuitive connection children feel with animals can be a tremendous source of joy. The unconditi...

Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they...

Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test t...

The term 'alpha female' originated in my field of animal behavior, but has acquired new meaning. It ...

If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality ...

Even the staunchest atheist growing up in Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic ten...

Ironically, torture requires empathy, too, in the sense that one cannot deliberately inflict pain wi...

The book of nature is like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what they want, from tolerance to intol...

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy i...

Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, rang...

If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks...

Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists expe...

Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists expe...