A Quote by Frans de Waal

Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other. It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant.

Frans de Waal

Quote Topics

Ancient Been Between Blur Brains Designed Elephant Every Line Marks Mouse Neural Other Our Self

Quote Author

Frans de Waal
Dutch - Scientist
Born: October 29, 1948

An elephant is vastly more efficient, metabolically, than a mouse. It's the same for a megacity as opposed to a village. But an elephant can break a leg very easily, whereas you can toss a mouse out of a window and it'll be fine. Size makes you fragile.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Isimangaliso must be the only place on the globe where the oldest land mammal (rhinoceros) and the world biggest terrestrial mammal (elephant) share an ecosystem with the world's oldest fish (coelacanth) and the world's biggest marine mammal (whale)

Nelson Mandela

We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet.

Jonathan Haidt

Every worm has to turn and every mouse must bite the elephant

Michael Basman

I think the neural pathways in our brains affect what happens in our bodies, and so can alter our health.

Amy Hardie

What True Blood does really well is that it balances on the line between good and evil - you blur the distinction between the two.

Robert Kazinsky

What 'True Blood' does really well is that it balances on the line between good and evil - you blur the distinction between the two.

Robert Kazinsky

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Desmond Tutu

The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning-the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes-the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.

Jonathan Haidt

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal.

Daphne Sheldrick

Checklists turn out...to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction - in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.