Robert Sapolsky quotes

Robert Sapolsky is a renowned American neuroscientist, biologist, and author known for his groundbreaking research on stress and behavior. He is a professor at Stanford University, where he has spent decades studying the effects of stress on the brain and body. Sapolsky's work has helped to deepen our understanding of how stress impacts health and behavior. In addition to his academic work, he is also a popular author, with several best-selling books on the topics of biology, stress, and human behavior. His work has earned him numerous awards and accolades, solidifying his reputation as a leading expert in his field. Learn more about Robert Sapolsky and his research by exploring his books and lectures.

Medicine is a social science, and politics nothing but medicine on a large scale.

- Robert 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 Sapolsky

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

- Robert Sapolsky

A large percentage of what we think of when we talk about stress-related diseases are disorders of excessive stress-responses.

- Robert Sapolsky

You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.

- Robert Sapolsky

We love stress that is mild and transient and occurs in a benevolent context.

- Robert Sapolsky

The more categories of adversities a child suffers, the dimmer his or her chances of a happy, functional adulthood.

- Robert Sapolsky

The default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.

- Robert Sapolsky

The childhood capacity for empathy progresses from feeling someone’s pain because you are them, to feeling for the other person, to feeling as them.

- Robert Sapolsky

Testosterone makes people cocky, egocentric, and narcissistic.

- Robert Sapolsky

Social conservatives tend toward lower thresholds for disgust than liberals.

- Robert Sapolsky

It is easier to learn fear and harder to unlearn it.

- Robert Sapolsky

If you’re stressed like a normal mammal in an acute physical crisis, the stress response is lifesaving. But if instead you chronically activate the stress response for reasons of psychological stress, your health suffers.

- Robert Sapolsky

If you (or any other mammal) bite into rancid food, the insular cortex lights up, causing you to spit it out, gag, feel nauseated, make a revolted facial expression—the insular cortex processes gustatory disgust. Ditto for disgusting smells.

- Robert Sapolsky

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

- Robert Sapolsky

Willpower is more than just a metaphor; self-control is a finite resource.

- Robert Sapolsky

We are constantly being shaped by seemingly irrelevant stimuli, subliminal information, and internal forces we don't know a thing about.

- Robert Sapolsky

Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

- Robert Sapolsky

If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we'd desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won't be enough tomorrow.

- Robert Sapolsky

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

- Robert 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 Sapolsky

Dopamine is not about the happiness of reward. It's about the happiness of pursuit of reward that has a decent chance of occurring.

- Robert Sapolsky

Being healthy consists of having the same disease as everyone else.

- Robert Sapolsky

It takes surprisingly little in terms of uncontrollable unpleasantness to make humans give up and become helpless in a generalized way.

- Robert 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 Sapolsky