We would much rather blame nature for what we don't like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like.

The chimpanzees could tear me apart in no time. They're many times stronger than we are.

When we are bad, we are worse than any primate that I know. And when we are good, we are actually better and more altruistic than any primate that I know.

You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions.

Females avoid conflict. They are afraid of violence. The males, on the other hand, are less averse to strife. But once conflict breaks out, the males are much better at reconciling. In a study done in Finland, children who had quarreled were asked how much longer they intended to be angry at one another. The boys proudly said: "Oh, at least one or two days." The girls said "forever".

I call the notion that we are nothing but killer apes the Beethoven fallacy. Beethoven was disorganized and messy, and yet his music is the epitome of order.

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!