We are by far the most contradictory of all primates. An animal with this much internal conflict has never lived on this earth.

Empathy as a complex emotion is different. It requires awareness of the other person's feelings and of one's own reactions. The appropriate reaction may not be to cry when another person cries, but to reassure them, or even to leave them alone.

Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.

Competitiveness is just as much a part of our nature as empathy. The ideal, in my view, is a democratic system with a social market economy, because it takes both tendencies into account.

We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.

A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures but just goes ahead and attacks.

We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off.