Robert Sapolsky Quotes

Very ancient parts of the brain are involved in moral decision making.

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

There is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy... They're controlled by different parts of the brain.

We will move from looking at correlations between brain activity and behaviour to studying how the brain causes mental states and behaviour.

Cognitive neuroscience is entering an exciting era in which new technologies and ideas are making it possible to study the neural basis of cognition, perception, memory and emotion at the level of networks of interacting neurons, the level at which we believe many of the important operations of the brain take place.

You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.

All the different ways we know the world all come from the brain, and they all depend on each other to make sense.

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain.

There's a lot of real estate in our brain dedicated to facial recognition and to physics. That takes a lot of processing power out of our brain.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

Many cognitive psychologists see the brain as a computer. But every single brain is absolutely individual, both in its development and in the way it encounters the world.

Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality.

To find better means of fixing the brain, we first need to achieve something more fundamental. We must understand how it works.

The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.

The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining, just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature.

We pretend that the brain is binary, like a computer. But it's not. It's completely holographic.

The notion of humans as inherently rational beings has been not only trashed in economics, but trashed in all the best research on moral decision-making.

The human brain has an amazing ability for pattern recognition, sometimes even better than a computer.

These arguments on each side (and many more might be produced) are so plausible, that I am apt to suspect, they may, the one as well as the other, be solid and satisfactory, and that reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions.

Is there anybody here who thinks that following the orders takes away the blame Is there anybody here who wouldn't mind a murder by another name?

It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.

I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.

For the real difference between humans and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust, etc. It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.