« All Animal Quotes · Frans de Waal's Page
Animal Quotes by 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…
- There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.
- To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals…
- It is not only visitors to the zoo who are fascinated but uneasy in the presence of chimpanzees; the same is true of scientists. The…
- 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…
- There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.
- It is hard to get animals which normally pay little attention to each other to do things together. One can teach dolphins to jump simultaneously…
- Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.
- The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.
- I am personally not against keeping animals at zoos, as they serve a huge educational purpose, but treating them well and with respect seems the…
- In Africa, we have the bush meat trade, which means that, on a very large scale, animals are being killed in the forests and sold…
- Most exotic animals are not particularly interested in people, which makes it hard to provoke them. Human-rearing gets them used to and sometimes imprinted on…
- 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…
- 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…
- There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction.
- Scientists are supposed to study animals in a totally objective fashion, similar to the way we inspect a rock or measure the circumference of a…
- Closeness to animals creates the desire to understand them, and not just a little piece of them, but the whole animal. It makes us wonder…
- One thing bothered me as a student. In the 1960s, human behavior was totally off limits for the biologist. There was animal behavior, then there…
More Animal Quotes
- At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. — Aristotle
- Man is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle
- To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult. — Isaac Asimov
- If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men… — Francis of Assisi
- People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile. — David Attenborough
- There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of… — David Attenborough
- Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And… — David Attenborough
- The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between… — David Attenborough
- I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work. — David Attenborough
- I'm not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pat them, but I am intoxicated… — David Attenborough
- If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is… — David Attenborough
- Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you… — David Attenborough