Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
Robert M. Sapolsky
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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.”
“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.”
“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.)”
“Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action.”
“Prior to the monotheistic Yahweh, the gods made sense, in that they had familiar, if supra-human appetites—they didn’t just want a lamb shank, they wanted the best lamb shank, wanted to seduce all the wood nymphs, and so on. But the early Jews invented a god with none of those desires, who was so utterly unfathomable, unknowable, as to be pants-wettingly terrifying. So even if His actions are mysterious, when He intervenes you at least get the stress-reducing advantages of attribution—it may not be clear what the deity is up to, but you at least know who is responsible for the locust swarm or the winning lottery ticket. There is Purpose lurking, as an antidote to the existential void.”
“if you want to increase your chances of avoiding stress-related diseases, make sure you don’t inadvertently allow yourself to be born poor.”
“Basically, your heart is just a dumb, simple mechanical pump, and your blood vessels are nothing more exciting than hoses.”
“We readily think of stressors as consisting of various unpleasant things that can be done to an organism. Sometimes a stressor can be the failure to provide something essential, and the absence of touch is seemingly one of the most marked developmental stressors that we can suffer.”
“If it's the right person tickling you in that adolescent stage of being on the cusp of sexuality, maybe, just maybe, that tickling is going to be followed by something really good, like hand-holding. In contrast, if it's Slobodan Milosovic who is tickling you, maybe, just maybe, it will be followed up by his trying to ethnically cleanse you.”
“All but the most heroically strong among us would slip another step lower in the face of this loss. It is true that hope, no matter how irrational, can sustain us in the darkest of times. But nothing can break us more effectively than hope given and then taken away capriciously. Manipulating these psychological variables is a powerful but double-edged sword.”
Except where otherwise noted, all rights reserved to the author(s) of this book (mentioned above). The content of this page serves solely as promotional material for the aforementioned book. If you enjoyed these quotes, you can support the author(s) by acquiring the full book from Amazon.
Book Keywords:
god, jewish, self, athletes, control, hope, personality, pessimistic, depression
