Frans de Waal Quotes

Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.

I love the beach; I grew up on the Baltic Sea. I love the beach. I love the water. I love surfing and swimming.

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

What was once dormant is now a Creeping Thing

I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.

Realize that change - whilst we want it to happen fast - is usually the result of a great deal of work, and often comes as a result of a series of compromises (so long as we do not compromise our values).

Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and development of human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The illusion could be explained by evolutionary processes that contained no such purpose at all. But the spread of ideas through imitation required the whole apparatus of human consciousness and intentionality

Reform is a process, and not an event.

My soul is full of longing for the secret of the sea

Love the sea? I dote upon it--from the beach.

A different image came to me a few weeks ago. The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration... the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far off you hardly hear it... yet finally it surrounds the resistant substance.

Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media.

I have a large sea shell collection which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen it.

The emotions attached to them were like sand castles in the tide, slowly washing out to sea.

Two lost things that had survived the seas and arrived on a coastline. What did they do? They implanted themselves in the sand and grew into trees and lined the beaches. Sometimes a lot can come of being all washed up. You can really grow.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It's always our self we find in the sea.

When this is over...we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will.

I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought.

The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.

I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.

I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.

Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Yet man does recognise himself [as an animal]. But I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history, I certainly know of none... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science.