"In the case of an intrinsically rewarding activity, external rewards undermine this intrinsic motivation—they externalize it to the reward."
— Michael Tomasello
"I do not believe that human altruism is a single trait, but rather that humans are more or less altruistic in different domains of activity, each of which has its own characteristics."
— Michael Tomasello
"Children soon learn to lie also, but that comes only some years later and presupposes preexisting cooperation and trust. If people did not have a tendency to trust one another’s helpfulness, lying could never get off the ground."
— Michael Tomasello
"Enforcing norms is an act of altruism, as the whole group benefits from my attempts to make the transgressor shape up."
— Michael Tomasello
"Imitation and conformity can create high degrees of intra-group homogeneity and inter-group heterogeneity, and on a faster time scale than that of biological evolution."
— Michael Tomasello