Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

It may be a mistake, that man, in a state of nature, is more disposed to cruelty than courtesy.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

Every human being has a bit of gangster in him.

I think its man's nature to go to war and fight.

Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.

I've always been fascinated by accounts of seemingly 'normal' people who have committed horrendous acts of cruelty and violence. You hear it on the news all the time.

The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that lead to death. It's an unfortunate parallel to human behavior - they have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse, because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil.

I thought if I could understand why apes get mean and horrible and aggressive when they grow up, maybe I could understand why people get mean and horrible and aggressive and have wars.

Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.

A lot of guys don't want to admit that they have a propensity for generosity and for violence.

There's a common criticism of evolutionary psychology that it's fatalistic and it dooms us to eternal strife, 'Why even try to work toward peace if we're just bloody killer apes and violence is in our genes?'

Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.

I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.

We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

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

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.

Without game, men prey on each other.

Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us.

There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.

Men! The only animal in the world to fear.

I'm fascinated by what people will do to each other. Actually, I'm sort of interested in the gory details of life.

Fighting is not a man's thing, it is a human thing.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature.