Robert Sapolsky Quotes

Robert Sapolsky

Profession : Scientist

Birth : April 6, 1957

Baboons who have friends do much better in terms of their physiology. And if that applies to a baboon, it could certainly apply for a human.

Robert Sapolsky

I used to very politely say that if there is free will then it's in all sorts of boring places, like whether you're going to pick up this or that fork as you begin your meal. There really is none: It's all biology.

Robert Sapolsky

Depression is like the worst disease you can get. It's devastating.

Robert Sapolsky

Disgust is a very powerful tool for bringing about crowd violence. If a group can be dehumanized and made into the Other, the 'them,' to treat that group horribly is made much easier.

Robert Sapolsky

Literal cleanliness and orderliness can release us from abstract cognitive and affective distress - just consider how, during moments where life seems to be spiraling out of control, it can be calming to organize your clothes, clean the living room, get the car washed.

Robert Sapolsky

We like our individuality, we like the mysteriousness of us, the essentialism of us, and it can be alarming to see the biological gears turning underneath.

Robert Sapolsky

Primates are super smart and organized just enough to devote their free time to being miserable to each other and stressing each other out.

Robert Sapolsky

I was this eggheady kid, the one who was consistently beaten up and picked last for the baseball teams.

Robert Sapolsky

At its worst, there's just virtually no organ system in your body that's not thrown out of kilter in some way by chronic psychological stress.

Robert Sapolsky

As for testosterone, it's gotten a bum rap. Yes, it has tons to do with aggression but it doesn't cause aggression as much as sensitizes you to the environmental triggers of aggression.

Robert Sapolsky

There's a science to what sort of people we're attracted to, and it has to do with everything from how similar they are to us, to what sort of pheromones we imprinted on when we were little, and what variants of genes we have related to the neurochemical oxytocin.

Robert Sapolsky

I spend most of my time by being at a university, hanging out with very manic, excited 18-year-olds.

Robert Sapolsky

When it comes to how neuroscience could help the wider public, the worst thing is when we make advances in, say, mindfulness, and then decide that everybody can potentially think their way to curing themselves or develop their own psycho-neuro-immune mechanisms for boosting cancer defenses.

Robert Sapolsky

My guess is that people with a stereotypically conservative exclusionary stance about immigration rarely have the sense that they feel disgusted that people elsewhere in the world would want to come to the United States for better lives. Instead, there is threat by the rabble, the unwashed masses, to the American way of life.

Robert Sapolsky

I think threat of change is pretty potent. In humans, blood pressure doesn't go up when people get laid off: it goes up when they first hear rumors that layoffs are coming at the end of the month.

Robert Sapolsky

If you're a gazelle, you don't have a very complex emotional life, despite being a social species. But primates are just smart enough that they can think their bodies into working differently. It's not until you get to primates that you get things that look like depression.

Robert Sapolsky

From spending my decades thinking about behavior and the biological influences on it, I'm convinced by now free will is what we call the biology that hasn't been discovered yet. It's just another way of stating that we're biological organisms determined by the physical laws of the universe.

Robert Sapolsky

If you're a baboon on the Serengeti, and you're miserable, it's almost certainly because some other baboon has had the free time and energy to devote to making you miserable.

Robert Sapolsky

For 99 percent of the beasts on this planet, stress is about three minutes of screaming in terror after which it's either over with or you're over with. And we turn it on for 30-year mortgages.

Robert Sapolsky

I think my becoming a writer had much to do with spending a chunk of each year sitting by myself out in a tent without radio, without newspapers, without a whole lot of people to interact with, without anybody having any sort of similar background to me.

Robert Sapolsky