110+ Robert Sapolsky Quotes on Stress, Behavior, and Primatology

Robert M. Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinologist and professor at Stanford University. He is known for his research on stress and its effects on the brain and behavior. He has written several books on the subject, including Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and The Trouble with Testosterone. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Robert M. Sapolsky on life, love, leadership.

Top 10 Robert M. Sapolsky Quotes

1. 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.
2. If a male primate is mean to a female primate, her whole family will come after him. We don't have that sort of accountability in industrial societies.
3. Ns are poster children for psychosocial stress, living in troops with bruising and shifting dominance hierarchies among males and high rates of male aggression.
4. 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.
5. Juvenile justice is probably the area that's most ripe for reform, in the nice liberal sense of the word, simply because there's no getting around the fact that a teenage brain is not an adult brain.
6. From the very moment of your life, culture is leaving an imprint on who you are.
7. We're lousy at recognizing when our normal coping mechanisms aren't working. Our response is usually to do it five times more, instead of thinking, maybe it's time to try something new.
8. I am completely of the school that mind is entirely the manifestation of brain. So when there's a change in mind, there's got to be a neurobiological underpinning.
9. The United States has the biggest discrepancy in health and longevity between our wealthiest and our poorest of any country on Earth.
10. Go get yourself stressed all the time and the common cold becomes more common.

Robert M. Sapolsky Short Quotes

• What's the punch line here? Physiologically, it doesn't come cheap being a bastard 24 hours a day.
• Show me one neuron that has some cellular semblance of free will. And there is no such neuron.
• To do good science, you’ve got to work really, really hard.
• I'm sort of a hippie pacifist in terms of general persona.
• My roots, in college, were in behavior in the context of evolution.
• You know, I'm an egg-heady scientist with a large beard and like Birkenstocks.
• If you have to abuse your power, you're probably in the process of losing it.
• We do our worst when we're surrounded by a lot of people who agree with us.
• Genes are not about inevitabilities; they're about potentials and vulnerabilities.
• Primates are really well designed to see who is not keeping up their end of the deal.

Robert M. Sapolsky Quotes About Life

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 M. Sapolsky

The first roller coaster I ever went on in my life wasn’t until college. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress. — Robert M. Sapolsky

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Robert M. Sapolsky Quotes About Love

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Is stress always bad? No - if a stressor isn't too extreme, is only transient, and occurs in what overall feels like a benevolent environment, it's great, we love it - that's what play and stimulation are. — Robert M. Sapolsky

That’s what stress management is about, that’s what psychotherapy is about, finding religion, or finding your loved one or your hobby — any of those, they give you more outlets, more of a sense of control, more of a sense of predictability, of social support. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We all seek out stress. We hate the wrong kinds of stress but when it's the right kind, we love it - we pay good money to be stressed by a scary movie, a roller coaster ride, a challenging puzzle. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Robert M. Sapolsky Quotes About Biology

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 M. Sapolsky

Of necessity, a scientist typically studies one incredibly tiny sliver of some biological system, totally ensconced within one discipline because even figuring out how one sliver works is really hard. — Robert M. 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 M. Sapolsky

Robert M. Sapolsky Famous Quotes And Sayings

Well, much of my research over the years has been on stress, and the adverse effects of stress on the health of the central nervous system. All things considered, I've been astonishingly unhelped by my own research. — Robert M. Sapolsky

My adolescent rebellions took the form of, if anything, passive-aggressively doing what was asked of me but doing it ten times more than what was asked of me, so that eventually they'd have to beg me to stop. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I am a reasonably emotional person, and I see no reason why that's incompatible with being a scientist. Even if we learn about how everything works, that doesn't mean anything at all. You can reduce how an impala leaps to a bunch of biomechanical equations. You can turn Bach into contrapuntal equations, and that doesn't reduce in the slightest our capacity to be moved by a gazelle leaping or Bach thundering. There is no reason to be less moved by nature around us simply because it's revealed to — Robert M. Sapolsky

Schizophrenics have a whole lot of trouble telling the level of abstraction of a story. They're always biased in the direction of interpreting things more concretely than is actually the case. — Robert M. Sapolsky

My lab looks at the ability of stress hormones to kill brain cells, and basically we are trying to understand on a molecular level how a neuron dies after a stroke, a seizure, Alzheimer's, brain aging, and what these stress hormones do to make it worse. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Orthodox Judaism has this amazing set of rules: everyday there's a bunch of strictures of things you're supposed to do, a bunch you're not supposed to do, and the number you're supposed to do is the same number as the number of bones in the body. The number that you're not supposed to do is the same number as the number of days in the year. The amazing thing is, nobody knows what the rules are! — Robert M. Sapolsky

The more important reason why people shouldn't be afraid is, we're never going to inadvertently go and explain everything. We may learn everything about something, and we may learn something about everything, but we're never going to learn everything about everything. When you study science, and especially these realms of the biology of what makes us human, what's clear is that every time you find out something, that brings up ten new questions, and half of those are better questions than you started with. — Robert M. Sapolsky

It's a profound privilege to die from stress-related diseases. It is the elimination of other causes of death such as infectious disease which is responsible for bringing lifestyle diseases to the fore - and these are exquisitely sensitive to stress. — Robert M. Sapolsky

As I became more interested in behavior from the standpoint of neurobiology, the stress-response became really interesting. What stress physiology is about is - when there is a new environmental challenge, how does an individual adapt? It seemed like a natural transition. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a major neighborhood specializing in that, in Brooklyn. And somewhere when I was about 14, something changed. And that change probably involved updating every molecule in my body, in that I sort of realized: this is nonsense, there's no God, there's no free will, there is no purpose. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Authoritarians have always been here. But the features of a given moment make that way of thinking more or less appealing. Germany in the 1920s, when people are starving, suddenly makes 'populist' answers and scapegoating different groups as the source of the problem much more appealing. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We have this amazing ability to turn on the exactly same stress response worrying about a mortgage that a zebra does when it's sprinting away from a lion. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Ecosystems majorly shape culture — but then that culture can be exported and persist in radically different places for millennia. — Robert M. Sapolsky

So what's the adaptive advantage of schizophrenia? It has to do with a classic truism — this business that sometimes you have a genetic trait which in the full-blown version is a disaster, but the partial version is good news. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We're a miserably violent species. But there's a complication, which is we don't hate violence, we hate the wrong kind. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Ns who have friends do much better in terms of their physiology. And if that applies to a n, it could certainly apply for a human. — Robert M. Sapolsky

But I like schlocky violent movies, but I'm for strict gun control. But then there was a time I was at a laser tag place, and I had such a good time hiding in a corner shooting at people. In other words, I'm your basic confused human when it comes to violence. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We're only a couple of hundreds of years into understanding that epilepsy is a neurological disease and not a demonic possession. We're only about 50 years into understanding that certain types of learning disabilities are micro malformations in the cortex in people with dyslexia and not laziness or lack of motivation. The vast majority of these factoids presented in the book are 10, 20 years old, and all that's gonna happen is we're gonna learn more and more of that stuff. And what we're goin — Robert M. Sapolsky

Why do we have schizophrenia in every culture on this planet? From an evolutionary perspective, schizophrenia is not a cool thing to have. ... Schizophrenia is not an adaptive trait. You can show this formally: schizophrenics have a lower rate of leaving copies of their genes in the next generation than unaffected siblings. By the rules, by the economics of evolution, this is a maladaptive trait. Yet, it chugs along at a one to two percent rate in every culture on this planet. — Robert M. 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 M. 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 M. Sapolsky

The stress response is incredibly ancient evolutionarily. Fish, birds and reptiles secrete the same stress hormones we do, yet their metabolism doesn’t get messed up the way it does in people and other primates. — Robert M. Sapolsky

For me, the single most important question is how to construct a society that is just, safe, peaceful — all those good things — when people finally accept that there is no free will. — Robert M. Sapolsky

If some ns just happen to be good at seeing water holes as half full instead of half empty… we should be able to as well. — Robert M. 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 M. Sapolsky

You don’t want to end up telling somebody who’s homeless or a refugee that stress is all perceptual, because it sure isn’t in those cases. But most of us have fairly neurotic middle-class stressors. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Shamans are not evolutionarily unfit. Shamans are not leaving fewer copies of their genes. These are some of the most powerful, honored members of society. This is where the selection is coming from. … In order to have a couple of shamans on hand in your group, you're willing to put up with the occasional third cousin who's schizophrenic. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Most people who do a lot of exercise, particularly in the form of competitive athletics, have unneurotic, extraverted, optimistic personalities to begin with. (Marathon runners are exceptions to this.) — Robert M. Sapolsky

Primates are hardwired for us/them dichotomies. Our brains detect them in less than 100 milliseconds. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Oxytocin, the luv hormone, makes us more prosocial to Us and worse to everyone else. That’s not generic prosociality. That’s ethnocentrism and xenophobia. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch. — Robert M. Sapolsky

If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets. — Robert M. Sapolsky

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads. — Robert M. Sapolsky

What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Perhaps most excitingly, we are uncovering the brain basis of our behaviors - normal, abnormal and in-between. We are mapping a neurobiology of what makes us us. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Some Poor grad student pressing on the flanks of a hamster and out comes a doctorate on the other side — Robert M. Sapolsky

To out-group-members, oxytocin makes you crappier - less cooperative and more preemptively aggressive. It's not the luv hormone. It's the in-group parochialism/xenophobia hormone. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Almost always, genes are about potentials and vulnerabilities rather than about determinism. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday. — Robert M. Sapolsky

If you care about your longevity and health, be a socially affiliated baboon who is better than high-ranking ones at walking away from provocations. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The problem isn't testosterone and aggression; it's how often we reward aggression. And we do: We give medals to masters of the "right" kinds of aggression. We preferentially mate with them. We select them as our leaders. — Robert M. Sapolsky

But often, it's easier to resist temptation with distraction, or to be so inculcated in doing the right thing that it's automatic, outside the frontal cortex's portfolio - Then it isn't the harder thing, it's the only thing you can do. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Oxytocin is lauded for how it promotes warmth, generosity, social bonding, cooperation, trust, and compassion. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The fascinating thing about our best and worst behaviors isn't the behavior itself - the brain tells the muscles to do something or other - big deal. It's the meaning of the behavior. — Robert M. Sapolsky

As long as experiencing your optimal level of good stress doesn't damage others, it's hard to objectively define where normal enjoyment of stimulation becomes adrenaline junkiehood. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Genes are important for understanding our behavior. Incredibly important - after all, they code for every protein pertinent to brain function, endocrinology, etc. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We're getting along so well; I trust you so much for this one second that I'm going to let you yank on me. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Oxytocin is a Teflon hormone - bad news rolls off it. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The gigantic challenge is the magnitude of the individual differences in the optimal set point for "good stress." For one person, it's doing something risky with your bishop in a chess game; for someone else, it's becoming a mercenary in Yemen. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Naturally, things are more complicated - those groovy, pro-social effects of oxytocin apply to how we interact with in-group members. — Robert M. Sapolsky

...when doing science (or perhaps when doing anything at all in a society as judgmental as our own), be very careful and very certain before pronouncing something to be a norm - because at that instant, you have made it supremely difficult to ever again look objectively at an exception to that supposed norm. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Most of us don't collapse into puddles of stress-related disease. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The most important point of [Susan] Fiske's work is that it provides a taxonomy for our differing feelings about different Thems - sometimes fear, sometimes ridicule, sometimes contemptuous pity, sometimes savagery. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Brains distinguish between an Us and a Them in a fraction of a second. Subliminal processing of a Them activates the amygdala and insular cortex, brain regions that are all about fear, anxiety, aggression, and disgust. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Give lab rats oxytocin and, according to that meme, they get better at talking about their feelings and sing like Joan Baez. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Hormones influencing the sensitivity of the person to environmental stimuli. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We are just another primate but a very confused, malleable one. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The frontal cortex is an incredibly interesting part of the brain - ours is proportionately bigger and/or more complex than in any other species. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Digestion is quickly shut down during stress…The parasympathetic nervous system, perfect for all that calm, vegetative physiology, normally mediates the actions of digestion. Along comes stress: turn off parasympathetic, turn on the sympathetic, and forget about digestion. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Importantly, rather than promoting aggression, testosterone promotes whatever is needed to maintain status when challenged. — Robert M. Sapolsky

What happened during the minutes before? That's the realm of sensory stimuli of the nervous system. — Robert M. Sapolsky

It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who can do the most acts of random kindness. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Individual differences in testosterone level predict very little about differences in aggression. — Robert M. Sapolsky

It's great to have a buff frontal cortex to do that harder thing - for example, help a person in need rather buy some useless, shiny gee-gaw. — Robert M. Sapolsky

...I might continue to believe that there is no god even if it were proved that there is. A religious friend of mine once remarked that the concept of god is useful, because you can berate god during the bad times. But it is clear to me that I don't need to believe there is a god in order to berate him. — Robert M. Sapolsky

We’ve evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Finish this lecture, go outside, and unexpectedly get gored by an elephant, and you are going to secrete glucocorticoids. There's no way out of it. You cannot psychologically reframe your experience and decide you did not like the shirt, here's an excuse to throw it out - that sort of thing. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The less it is possible that something can be, the more it must be. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Pulling a gun's trigger can be an appalling act. But if it is suicidal drawing fire to save someone, it has an utterly different meaning. Placing your hand on someone's arm can be an act of deep compassion or the first step of betrayal. The punch line? It's all about context, and the biology of context is vastly more complicated than the biology of the behavior itself. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action. — Robert M. Sapolsky

For example, most mammals are either monogamous or polygamous. But as every poet or divorce attorney will tell you, humans are confused - After all, we have monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, celibacy, and so on. In terms of the most unique thing we do socially, my vote goes to something we invented alongside cities - we have lots of anonymous interactions and interactions with strangers. That has shaped us enormously. — Robert M. Sapolsky

What happened in the milliseconds before a behavior to cause it? That's in the neurobiological realm. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The frontal cortex doesn't even fully develop until age 25, which is wild! — Robert M. Sapolsky

But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick. — Robert M. Sapolsky

The regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes. — Robert M. Sapolsky

On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occurring when your cortex thinks an abstract thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is as real as a physical stressor. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Life Lessons by Robert M. Sapolsky

1. Robert M. Sapolsky's work has shown that stress can have a significant impact on physical and mental health, and that it is important to find ways to manage stress in order to maintain good health.
2. He has also demonstrated that the body's endocrine system plays a key role in how we respond to stress, and that understanding this system can help us better manage our stress levels.
3. Finally, Sapolsky's research has highlighted the importance of considering the social and environmental factors that can contribute to stress and its effects on our health.