Frans de Waal quotes

Frans de Waal is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist, renowned for his pioneering work on animal behavior and empathy. His research on primate social intelligence has reshaped our understanding of human and animal emotions. He is recognized for bridging the gap between biology and social science through his influential books and public lectures. Here are 66 of his quotes:

The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures.

Frans de Waal

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?

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.

Frans de Waal

The fact that the apes exist and that we can study them is extremely important and makes us reflect on ourselves and our human nature. In that sense alone, you need to protect the apes.

Frans de Waal

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.

Frans de Waal

The enemy of science is not religion.... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

Frans de Waal

At the time, I was interested in reconciliation after fights, and I wanted to know how bonobos did it compared to chimpanzees. Very soon I discovered that they were much more sexual in everything they did, and that interested me - not so much for the sex part, even though that became a very hot topic, the peacemaking-through-sex thing - but much more how they have such a peaceful society, because they are much less violent than chimpanzees.

Frans de Waal

I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years.

Frans de Waal

Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food.

Frans de Waal

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.

Frans de Waal

Clearly, we have both of these sides in us, and that's why I sometimes call us "the bipolar apes."

Frans de Waal

I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species.

Frans de Waal

I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps, because I had been studying them. I saw the bonobos at a zoo in Holland, and I thought immediately, they're totally different.

Frans de Waal

It is true that the chimpanzee is dominance-oriented, violent, territorial. But it's also cooperative in many ways, and so that side is sometimes forgotten. The bonobo is sensual, sensitive, sexual, a peacemaker, but also can have a nasty side, and that's sometimes forgotten.

Frans de Waal

The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.

Frans de Waal

Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.

Frans de Waal

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.

Frans de Waal

War is evitable if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits.

Frans de Waal

It is well known that apes in the wild offer spontaneous assistance to each other, defending against leopards, say, or consoling distressed companions with tender embraces.

Frans de Waal

Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities.

Frans de Waal

Bonobo studies started in the '70s and came to fruition in the '80s. Then in the '90s, all of a sudden, boom, they ended because of the warfare in the Congo. It was really bad for the bonobo and ironic that people with their warfare were preventing us from studying the hippies of the primate world.

Frans de Waal

Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity.

Frans de Waal