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" The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically. "

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" I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology. "

" Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners. "

" When humans behave murderously, such as inflicting senseless slaughter of innocents in warfare, we like to blame it on some dark, 'animalistic' instinct. "

" 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 least we could do, and with 'we' I mean not just zoo staff, but most certainly also the public. "

" Chimps don't have language. Humans actively instruct others about how things should be done. Chimpanzees probably pick up cultural traditions by observation. "

" You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. "

" Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position. "

" Understanding the need for religion is a far superior goal to bashing it. "

" Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?' "

" Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature. "

" A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures but just goes ahead and attacks. "

" Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies. "

" Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food. "

" Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities. "

" 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 tree trunk. Emotions are not to interfere with the assessment. The animal-rights movement capitalizes on this perception, depicting scientists as devoid of compassion. "

" Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it. "

" Chimpanzees have very strong preferences and aversions that are completely personality-linked. The people who are unsuccessful in working with chimpanzees are those who take this personally. "

" There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves. "

" There are beautiful examples of art done by chimpanzees in human care. "

" There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction. "

" I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choice. "

" Human morality is unthinkable without empathy. "

" Bonobo studies started in the '70s and came to fruition in the '80s. Then in the '90s, all of a sudden, boom, they ended because of the warfare in the Congo. It was really bad for the bonobo and ironic that people with their warfare were preventing us from studying the hippies of the primate world. "

" The whole reason people fill their homes with furry carnivores and not with, say, iguanas and turtles, is because mammals offer something no reptile ever will. They give affection, they want affection, and respond to our emotions the way we do to theirs. "

" I describe in 'Chimpanzee Politics' how the alpha male needs broad support to reach the top spot. He needs some close allies and he needs many group members to be on his side. "

" Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other. It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant. "

" 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. "

" There's a long tradition in Western thought that humans are not shackled by biology, whereas animals are pure instinct machines. "

" Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity. "

" War is evitable if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits. "