Sue Savage-Rumbaugh Quotes

I think that maybe human beings are conditioned to violence.

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

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

The only thing I learnt in high school is that people are very violent and territorial.

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

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.

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.

Man is to man either a god or a wolf.

The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human.

Without game, men prey on each other.

It goes without saying that when survival is threatened, struggles erupt between peoples, and unfortunate wars between nations result.

War is no more inevitable than the plague is inevitable. War is no more a part of human nature than the burning of witches is a human act.

Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us.

I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely.

Our permanent enemy is the noted bellicosity of human nature.... The plain truth is that people want war.... It is a sacrament. Society would rot, they think, without the mystical blood-payment.

Violence is literally the glue of the cycle of life, and yet I think that we're the only species that does it maliciously.

There are people who just love to destroy other people. It saddens me to admit that, I think, at whatever state of human civilisation we arrive at, the will to destroy other people is something that is innate in some people.

Because I am fascinated by people and what makes them behave the way they do. I think it is one of the most fascinating things in the world.

...In little more than a single century from 1820 to 19450, no less than fifty-nine million human animals were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another.... We describe these killings as men behaving "like animals," but if we could find a wild animal that showed signs of acting this way, it would be more precise to describe it as behaving like men.

From ancient to modern times, the human animal knows how to find fighting.

Man is, perhaps, no more prone to war than he used to be and no more inclined to commit other evil deeds. But a given amount of ill will or folly will go further than it used to.

All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that's why you so often want to kill each other.

It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.

Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.

Whether in a suit or in a loincloth people are ignorant little thorns cutting into one another. They seem incapable of advancing beyond the violent tendencies which at one time were necessary for survival.