Robert Sapolsky Quotes

Men do weird things when they experience fear. It's like a fight-or-flight thing.

The purpose of fear, clearly, is to help you get away - which it does. If your heart rate increases, there is more blood pumping so you can use that blood to fuel your muscles to run away. Oxygen is sent to the lungs so you can run fast. Pupils dilating help you see in the dark. All of that prepares your body to fight or escape.

It's amazing how much of a bodily experience being scared is. It doesn't take very long of hyperventilating to feel like you're going to pass out. It's one of those things where being scared is more of a physiological response that you can pretty easily manipulate. So in those types of scenes, it just takes a lot of energy.

Nerves are good. They keep you alive.

Once we start believing that the apocalypse is coming, the amygdala goes on high alert, filtering out most anything that says otherwise.

When I'm scared, my natural state is to hide and run for cover.

Adrenaline is so strong that none of us understand it.

Closer to a fight, I can really feel my heartbeat in my chest. I can hear it beat through my mouth, this 'gunk, gunk, gunk' rhythm.

As a human, if you're in a scary situation, you pretty much forget about everything else! You just try and survive.

When people get into that fight-or-flight place, then they move away from the creative centers of their brain.

I need to be frightened of things. I hate it, but I must need it, because it's what I do.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Basically, my problem was attributed to stress more than anything. I don't know what that does and I guess doctors can tell you that there's chemicals that build up in your system when you go through a lot of stress and constant stress.

The amygdala in the emotional center sees and hears everything that occurs to us instantaneously and is the trigger point for the fight or flight response.

Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear.

I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument.

Anxiety is a kind of fuel that activates the fight-or-flight part of the brain in me. It makes sure that a velociraptor isn't around the corner and that you do as much as you possibly can to survive. Because Hollywood has a lot in common with 'Jurassic Park' and its primeval-dinosaur universe.

I've always been fascinated with adrenaline; it's saved my life more than once, and it's caused me to need it to save my life more than once. One of the most fascinating responses in human evolution, adrenaline sharpens your brain; it sharpens your responses.

Whenever we feel stressed out, that's a signal that our brain is pumping out stress hormones. If sustained over months and years, those hormones can ruin our health and make us a nervous wreck.

Forced to confront a reptile or an international financial crisis, I'll take the reptile every time.

Panic is a natural human response to danger, but it's one that severely compounds the risk.

You think you would react one way when a situation develops and, and when the sharp shells are flying, you don't quite stand up like you think you might.

If people are shooting at you, it's human nature to be afraid. I was afraid. I'll be quite blunt about that.

When I get real excited, my muscles go into spasm, so they just shake.

In the right circumstances, terror is good. It makes you focus.