Frans de Waal Quotes About Empathy

Quotes about: Empathy

• I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!

  Frans de Waal

  Caring, Empathy, Intellectual

  Frans de Waal (2006). “Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are”, p.41, Penguin

• You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions.

  Frans de Waal

  Order, People, Empathy

• If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.

  Frans de Waal

  Motivation, Inspiration, Compassion

• 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

  Giving, Empathy, Brain

  "Do Humans Alone 'Feel Your Pain'?". The Chronicle, October 26, 2001.

• Empathy as a complex emotion is different. It requires awareness of the other person's feelings and of one's own reactions. The appropriate reaction may not be to cry when another person cries, but to reassure them, or even to leave them alone.

  Frans de Waal

  Empathy, Feelings, Different

• As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.

  Frans de Waal

  Mean, Later In Life, Empathy

• If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy.

  Frans de Waal

  Love, Compassion, Generosity

• Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

  Frans de Waal

  Empathy, Morality, Unthinkable

  "Science overturns view of humans as naturally 'nasty'". phys.org. February 20, 2012.

• Empathy probably started out as a mechanism to improve maternal care. Mammalian mothers who were attentive to their young's needs were more likely to rear successful offspring.

  Frans de Waal

  Mother, Successful, Empathy

• I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores.

  Frans de Waal

  Dog, Animal, Empathy

  "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist" by Natalie Angier, partners.nytimes.com. January 14, 2001.

• Competitiveness is just as much a part of our nature as empathy. The ideal, in my view, is a democratic system with a social market economy, because it takes both tendencies into account.

  Frans de Waal

  Views, Empathy, Economy

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