Frans de Waal · 304 pages
Rating: (1.5K votes)
“So, don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also to our closest relatives, the primates.”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
“Robin Hood had it right.Humanity's deepest wish is to spread the wealth.”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
“Why should caring for others begin with the self? There is an abundance of rather vague ideas about this issue, which I am sure neuroscience will one day resolve. Let me offer my own “hand waving” explanation by saying that advanced empathy requires both mental mirroring and mental separation. The mirroring allows the sight of another person in a particular emotional state to induce a similar state in us. We literally feel their pain, loss, delight, disgust, etc., through so-called shared representations. Neuroimaging shows that our brains are similarly activated as those of people we identify with. This is an ancient mechanism: It is automatic, starts early in life, and probably characterizes all mammals. But we go beyond this, and this is where mental separation comes in. We parse our own state from the other’s. Otherwise, we would be like the toddler who cries when she hears another cry but fails to distinguish her own distress from the other’s. How could she care for the other if she can’t even tell where her feelings are coming from? In the words of psychologist Daniel Goleman, “Self-absorption kills empathy.” The child needs to disentangle herself from the other so as to pinpoint the actual source of her feelings.”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
“We have a tendency to describe the human condition in lofty terms, such as a quest for freedom or striving for a virtuous life, but the life sciences hold a more mundane view: It’s all about security, social companionships, and a full belly. There is obvious tension between both views, which recalls that famous dinner conversation between a Russian literary critic and the writer Ivan Turgenev: 'We haven’t yet solved the problem of God,' the critic yelled, 'and you want to eat!”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
“Denmark has incredibly low crime rates, and parents feel that what a child needs most is frisk luft, or fresh air. The”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
“biology is usually called upon to justify a society based on selfish principles, but we should never forget that it has also produced the glue that holds communities together.”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
Frans de Waal
Born place: in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
Born date October 29, 1948
See more on GoodReads
“skilled manual work offered spiritual rewards to which academic institutions and my parent’s social milieu were oblivious.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
“Some people are content in the midst of deprivation and danger, while others are miserable despite having all the luck in the world. This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.”
― Sam Harris, quote from Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
“Then Cala said, the words blurted, stark and hard, “Serenity, we cannot be your friend.” “Friend? Cala, I—if we have been overfamiliar, we apologize.” “It isn’t that.” Cala did not sound happy, and his ears were flat, but he had carefully turned to look out the window so that Maia could not see his face. “It has been noticed, Serenity, that you treat your nohecharei more as equals than as servants.” “But you are not my servants.” “We are not your equals, Serenity. We have obligations to you which we must fulfill, and in the fulfillment of those obligations must lie the extent of our relationship.”
― Katherine Addison, quote from The Goblin Emperor
“Farley once stuck his ass out the window of the seventeenth floor at 30 Rock and took a shit. Another time, in front of twenty or twenty-five people in a very crowded writers’ room—mixed company, women, men—Farley came in naked. He has his dick tucked between his legs and he was doing Jame Gumb from Silence of the Lambs. He took a golf club and shoved it about three inches up his ass, then pulled the golf club out and started licking it.”
― Tom Shales, quote from Live From New York: An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live
“You’re the most beautiful thing in my life.”
― Helena Hunting, quote from PUCKED Over
I, Partridge: We Nee...
Non Friction
The Unidentified Red...
Equal of the Sun
VenomBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
