Frans de Waal Quotes

There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.

I think that we are supernatural. We are unique. We're the only animals in the universe that we know of that actually have self-consciousness, a sense of time and our own mortality.

I don't even think of chimps as animals. I think of them as beings.

If you treat an animal right, they don't run away. They're not like us. They run away from people they don't trust; most times we run away from ourselves.

Animals that not only move by their own free will and share feelings with people but also possess sight and hearing qualify as deserving of names.

Where do I come into all of this? Am I just some animal or dog?' And that started them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So I creeched louder still, creeching: 'Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?

Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.

First, then, I say, that the mind, which we often call the intellect, in which is placed the conduct and government of life, is not less an integral part of man himself, than the hand, and foot, and eyes, are portions of the whole animal.

Could anything be absurder than a man? The animal who knows everything about himself--except why he was born and the meaning of his unique existence.

What can you ever really know of other people's souls — of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole of creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.

Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined...they are individuals in their own right.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.

Man is a tool-making animal

To me the most interesting thing about man is that he is an animal who practices art and science and in every known society practices both together.

My view is that consciousness, the seat of "personalness," is the ultimate reality, and is also scientifically impenetrable. In other words, there is no scientific test one can postulate that would definitively prove its existence in another entity. We assume that other biological human persons, at least those who are at least acting conscious, are indeed conscious. But this too is an assumption, and this shared human consensus breaks down when we go beyond human experience (e.g., the debate on animal consciousness, and by extension animal rights).

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?

...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?

Man is a tool-using animal.

I take everything personally- that's what being a person is all about.

A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it is beautiful.

Not until man is willing to recognize his animal nature - in the good sense of the word - will he create genuine culture.

A lifelong intimacy with animals has got me out of the common notion that they are automata with a slight infusion of intelligence in their composition. The mind in beast and bird, as in man, is the main thing.

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.

I respect animals. I have more sympathy for an injured or dead animal than I do for an injured or dead human being, because human beings participate and cooperate in their own undoing. Animals are completely innocent. There are no innocent human beings.