The Goodness Paradox Quotes

“We are not merely the most intelligent of animals. We also have a rare and perplexing combination of moral tendencies. We can be the nastiest of species and also the nicest.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“History is far more important than evolutionary theorizing as a reminder about human potential, because the historical evidence of change is so much more vivid.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“Before we can talk or walk, we are programmed to recognize norm violators - those whose antisocial behavior classifies them as "bad".”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“...there is one thing we all take from granted: from hunter-gatherers to the Pope, we all live by a moral compass.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“The evidence that Homo sapiens have been self-domesticating for three hundred thousand years, and how it happened, suggests that we are a thoroughly unusual primate.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“The moral contradictions of our ancestry should not prevent us from reaching a realistic assessment of who we are. When we do that, high hopes are still possible.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“The important human quest should not be to promote cooperation. That goal is relatively simple and firmly founded on our self-domestication and moral senses. The harder challenge is reducing our capacity for organized violence.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“Every society has to find its own protection. To avert episodes of violence we should constantly remind ourselves of how easily a complex social organization can decay, and how hard it is to construct.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“...where coercive alliances regulate societal rules, conflicts between the interests of men and women consistently end in men's favor. Patriarchy in this sense is currently a human universal.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“We know that over time society sometimes improves in quality, and sometimes decays. What we cannot know is which direction our descendants will take.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“However, being moral can include not only acts of kindness but also deeds of conformity and violence.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“Coalitionary proactive aggression in humans, therefore, is most simply understood as an elaboration of ancient tendencies.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“People often expect religious believers to act in especially prosocial ways, which they often do, but religiosity is not always a predictor or moral kindness.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“The moral sense was once explained purely by religion. Now an evolutionary account is needed.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“Many tendencies that we regard as morally reprehensible clearly evolved, including numerous kinds of sexual coercion, lethal violence, and social domination. Equally, many morally delightful tendencies did not evolve, such as charity to strangers and kindness to animals.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“High-testosterone men are not particularly aggressive unless challenged, but when confronted they are likely than low-testosterone men to respond with aggression.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“Human competitiveness still has elements of the primate system of achieving status by individual combat.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“Without the learned skills passed down to us by previous generations, we are in trouble. With them, we dominate the planet.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“The moral contradictions of our ancestry should not prevent us from reaching a realistic assessment of who we are. Whehn we do that, high hopes are still possible.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“Heart surgery, space travel, and comic opera all depend on advances that would have amazed our distant ancestors. More important from an evolutionary point of view, however, they also depend on capacities for a quite exceptional ability to work together, including tolerance, trust, and understanding. Those are some of the qualities that cause our species to be thought of as exceptionally “good.” In short, a great oddity about humanity is our moral range, from unspeakable viciousness to heartbreaking generosity. From a biological perspective, such diversity presents an unsolved problem. If we evolved to be good, why are we also so vile? Or if we evolved to be wicked, how come we can also be so benign?”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution