Overzichtelijk Frans Quotes

Wild groups of chimpanzees attack their enemies like gangs. What they completely lack, precisely because of their strong territorial behavior, is a friendly relationship with their neighbors. ~ Frans De Waal

My wife says that I become different once I start to work with animals. My movements become different, my mood is different. It involves letting everything fall behind you, becoming intuitive in your dealings with wild creatures in a way that bypasses reason. Sometimes it's more like a dance than anything else. ~ Frans Lanting

I want to interpret the natural world and our links to it. It's driven by the belief of many world-class scientists that we're in the midst of an extinction crisis ... This time it's us that's doing it. ~ Frans Lanting

The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice. ~ Frans De Waal

Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position. ~ Frans De Waal

Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species. ~ Frans De Waal

Those who exclaim that "animals are not people" tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. To minimize the complexity of animal behavior without doing the same for human behavior erects an artificial barrier. ~ Frans De Waal

wrote: What should we make of Frans Balder's artificial intelligence?

The words blinked onto the computer screen: Mission accomplished! - Plague ~ David Lagercrantz

Personally, I think it is possible to build a society that is moral on a nonreligious basis, but the jury is still out on that. ~ Frans De Waal

Nature's my muse and it's been my passion. ~ Frans Lanting

Our societies probably work best if they mimic as closely as possible the small-scale communities of our ancestors. We certainly did not evolve to live in cities with millions of people where we bump into strangers everyone we go, are threatened by them in dark streets, sit next to them in the bus, and give them the finger in traffic jams. ~ Frans De Waal

Of amazing intelligence, they learn quickly and remember easily with few repetitions. There is often an uncanny understanding of what is wanted and needed of them at any given time. Bred to love people, they bond very tightly to their owners.24 Instead ~ Frans De Waal

Typically, the young male spreads his legs to show his erection - a sexual invitation - making sure that his back is turned to the other males or that, with his underarm leaning on his knee, one of his hands loosely dangles right next to his penis so that only the wooed female can see ~ Frans De Waal

Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative. ~ Frans De Waal

Even the staunchest atheist growing up in Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic tenets of Christian morality. Our societies are steeped in it: everything we have accomplished over the centuries, even science, developed either hand in hand with or in opposition to religion, but never separately. It is impossible to know what morality would look like without religion. It would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause. ~ Frans De Waal

It is said that man is wolf to man. I find this very unfair to wolves. ~ Frans De Waal

Very long ago our ancestors had moral systems. Our current institutions are only a couple of thousand years old, which is really not old in the eyes of a biologist. ~ Frans De Waal

I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology. ~ Frans De Waal

We need to separate the process of evolution - which is, indeed, a self-serving process - and the actual motivations of animals. ~ Frans De Waal

He prefers to point with a stick and will go out of his way to bring one with him, thus anticipating our test and his self-invented need for a tool. But ~ Frans De Waal

Harold Laswell's famous definition of politics as a social process determining "who gets what, when, and how," there can be little doubt that chimpanzees engage in it. Since in both humans and their closest relatives the process involves bluff, coalitions, and isolation tactics, a common terminology is warranted. ~ Frans De Waal

I think a photograph, of whatever it might be - a landscape, a person - requires personal involvement. That means knowing your subject, not just snapping at what's in front of you. ~ Frans Lanting

One aspect we might focus on during this moratorium is an alternative to overly cerebral approaches. ~ Frans De Waal

Studies of reconciliation in primates have demonstrated that if the relationship value increases between two parties they are more willing to make peace. ~ Frans De Waal

If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy. ~ Frans De Waal

There are many reasons for kindness, and religion is just one of them. ~ Frans De Waal

Lorenz was the charismatic, flamboyant thinker - he didn't conduct a single statistical analysis in his life - while Tinbergen did the nitty-gritty of actual data collection. ~ Frans De Waal

I was too restless as a boy to sit through an entire mass. It was akin to aversion training. I looked at it like a puppet show with a totally predictable story line. The only aspect I really liked was the music. ~ Frans De Waal

It was not even necessary for people to know how to sing to be considered rock musicians. Bob Dylan had no clue, but that did not stop him from becoming one of the greatest artists ever. ~ Frans Johansson

Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognitions of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself. ~ Frans De Waal

Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for. ~ Frans De Waal

The thinking is that we started evolving language not by speaking but by gesturing. ~ Frans De Waal

I don't know if I can."

I splayed my hand on the bulkhead beside Fran's shoulder and looked her in those pretty green eyes. "It's easier if you don't think about it. Shut it away, think about something else. Drink, fuck, do what you gotta do. Bury it so damn deep, it can't touch you. And before long, you'll forget what you were worried about."

Her lips turned down at the corners. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Is that what you do?"

"It works." Or it had. Until recently. Until One somehow made me look at myself though her eyes. Now I had shit going on in my head, like not wanting to let her down. Not wanting to let any of them down. Like this life and my place in it might actually mean something. That kinda thinking would get a man killed.

~ Caleb ~ Pippa DaCosta

I'm personally a nonbeliever, so I'm struggling with if we really need religion. ~ Frans De Waal

Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral. ~ Frans De Waal

One can take the ape out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the ape. ~ Frans De Waal

What my eyes seek in these encounters is not just the beauty traditionally revered by wildlife photographers. The perfection I seek in my photographic composition is a means to show the strength and dignity of animals in nature. ~ Frans Lanting