Helen Fisher Quotes

“If patterns of human love subtly change, all sorts of social and political atrocities can escalate.”

— Helen Fisher

“Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice.”

— Helen Fisher

“Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.”

— Helen Fisher

“Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby.”

— Helen Fisher

“Why do we feel jealousy? Therapists often regard the demon as a scar of childhood trauma or a symptom of a psychological problem. And it's true that people who feel inadequate, insecure, or overly dependent tend to be more jealous than others.”

— Helen Fisher

“Research shows that couples who have a lot of similarities, including intellectual compatibility, end up staying together.”

— Helen Fisher

“Jealousy can even be good for love. One partner may feel secretly flattered when the other is mildly jealous. And catching someone flirting with your beloved can spark the kind of lust and romance that reignites a relationship.”

— Helen Fisher

“Experiences shape the brain, but the brain shapes the way we view experiences, too.”

— Helen Fisher

“Men want to think women don't cheat, and women want men to think they don't cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.”

— Helen Fisher

“You can be instantly scared. You can be instantly happy. So why can't you be instantly romantically in love? I think when it happens, it's because you are ready to fall in love.”

— Helen Fisher

Throughout evolution, ostracism was death indeed.

— Helen Fisher

“A lot of people head into courtship looking for fireworks. Don't pass up a chance by dumping someone after a first date because you don't feel the fireworks. The fireworks can happen at any time and be maintained.”

— Helen Fisher

“Women have a better sense of smell than men do, and it's even sharper in the middle of their menstrual cycle, when estrogen levels peak and women are more likely to be deciding whether a man's attractive.”

— Helen Fisher

Women are better at reading body language everywhere in the world. As a matter of fact, it's associated with the female hormone estrogen. Women are better at figuring out of tone of voice, reading your face and posture and gesture.

— Helen Fisher

“The Great Depression of the 1930s saw more American unmarried women working from nine to five, mostly in repetitive, boring, subordinate, dead-end jobs. But the number of working women doubled between 1870 and 1940. During World War II it doubled once again.”

— Helen Fisher

“There exists no culture in which adultery is unknown, no cultural device or code that extinguishes philandering.”

— Helen Fisher

“Nobody gets out of love alive. You turn into a menace or a pest when you've been rejected.”

— Helen Fisher

“Sometimes we fall in love with somebody who will probably never love us, for reasons having nothing to do with us but with their own mindset, their chemistry.”

— Helen Fisher

Whether you're married or not, relationships - and the satisfaction tied to them - are extremely important for increasing men's and women's quality of life.

— Helen Fisher

“The Internet lets women use words, which is their natural tool. Little girls speak in more complex, grammatical sentences than little boys do, and women never lose that superiority in verbal ability.”

— Helen Fisher

Love is not an emotion; it is a drive.

— Helen Fisher

“There's more than one person on the planet. When you're madly in love, that's not what you think.”

— Helen Fisher

As women in industrial societies join the paid workforce, they gain the economic means to depart unhappy marriages more easily.

— Helen Fisher

“You don't come home from the office to spend time with another job. Hopefully you come home to someone you can have a good time with.”

— Helen Fisher

“A lot of people have been romantically in love with somebody who they feel wasn't appropriate to marry.”

— Helen Fisher

“Overdone lipstick is a deterrent to men. It rubs off easily onto their skin and the edges of their shirts, so it discourages them from kissing, touching, and coming closer to you, which is what they really want to do!”

— Helen Fisher

“Men couldn't care less if your strands are perfectly styled and neat. In fact, he might like you more with some wildness or bedhead, since it shows you're carefree and relaxed.”

— Helen Fisher

“If two very different people pool their DNA, they'll create more genetic variety, and their young will come to the job of parenting with a wider array of skills.”

— Helen Fisher

“When you look at the brain regions associated with picking up data from the body, a huge amount of the brain is devoted to picking up information from the lips and tongue.”

— Helen Fisher

“Young women today do not marry the men they met in high school, or even the one they go out with at college, because they do not need to.”

— Helen Fisher

I think you will find that with divorce will come happier remarriages.

— Helen Fisher

“I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy.”

— Helen Fisher

“Almost always, when I'm on TV, the producers who call me, who negotiate what we're going to say, is a woman.”

— Helen Fisher

“I think the happiness we find, we make.”

— Helen Fisher

“Along with our many human propensities, we evolved a huge cerebral cortex with which we make decisions.”

— Helen Fisher

“I can't conceive of caring more about my president than my own partner.”

— Helen Fisher

“In America, we are demanding everything from our marriage.”

— Helen Fisher

“The women's movement is just a symptom of basic changes in the economy that are favoring women.”

— Helen Fisher

“Today, American women bear an average of 2.2 children that live to adulthood. Across most of Europe, women bear even fewer young.”

— Helen Fisher

“As societies continue to loosen their standards regarding what is appropriate female and male behavior, I think we are going to realize we have not only underestimated women, but also men.”

— Helen Fisher

“People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.”

— Helen Fisher

“Romantic love is an obsession. It possesses you. You lose your sense of self. You can't stop thinking about another human being.”

— Helen Fisher

“Women have never been as interesting as they are now. Not at any time on this planet have women been so educated, so interesting, so capable.”

— Helen Fisher

“There's magic to love ... Millions of years ago we evolved three basic drives: the sex love, romantic love, and attachment to a long-term partner. These circuits are deeply embedded in the human brian. They're going to survive as long as our species survive on what Shakespeare called, this "mortal coil."”

— Helen Fisher

Women's worst invention was the plow. With the beginning of plow agriculture, men's roles became extremely powerful. Women lost their ancient jobs as collectors.

— Helen Fisher

“Romantic love is not an emotion ... It's a drive. It comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part of the mind, the craving part of the mind.”

— Helen Fisher

[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.

— Helen Fisher

Men are so visual, they see a woman who appeals to them physically, and it will trigger the romantic love system faster.

— Helen Fisher

Romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on Earth.

— Helen Fisher

“I don't think we're an animal that was built to be happy; we are an animal that was built to reproduce.”

— Helen Fisher