Frans de Waal · 304 pages
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“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
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“The truth is WE ALL ACHE.
WE ALL HAVE GROWING PAINS
and wonder if WE ARE
OKAY adn enough + loved.
THE THING IS - WE ARE.
REALLY.
WITHOUT the silver shoes
and lepord print sheet.
WE ARE ENOUGH WITHOUT
all the things we buy
to make us much more
than we are or need to be
we are simple
and complex
and rare
as is.”
― Sabrina Ward Harrison, quote from Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself
“The Chinese had a saying that had been in her mind for a while, troubling her: Society prepares the crime; the criminal only commits it.”
― James Patterson, quote from Cat and Mouse
“The author says one character's definition of a classic is any book he'd heard of before he was thirty.”
― Sinclair Lewis, quote from It Can't Happen Here
“What were you going to do with it?” McCain asked.
"I just thought it might come in useful.”
"Were you planning to attack me?”
"No. But that’s a good idea.”
― Anthony Horowitz, quote from Crocodile Tears
“people still fall in love, and out, yes, in and out, and out and in, and they please each other, and hurt each other, isn't that the truth, and they do these things in more or less conventionally dramatic fashion, unfashionable or not, go on, I'm going, and what goes on between them is still not only the most interesting but the most important thing in the bloody murderous world”
― John Barth, quote from Lost in the Funhouse
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