Apes Quotes - Page 9

• Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a much more efficient way of asserting their points of view.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Fighting, Men, Hair

  Arthur C. Clarke (2012). “2001: A Space Odyssey”, p.24, RosettaBooks

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• The higher the Ape goes, the more he shewes his taile.
  [The higher the ape goes, the more he shows his tail.]

  George Herbert

  Tails, Shows, Higher

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• Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

  Terry Pratchett

  Fall, Eye, Angel

  Terry Pratchett (2014). “A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction”, p.150, Random House

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• We're still just the world's premium brand of ape.

  Rick Bayan

  World, Premium, Brands

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• People sometimes try to score debating points by saying, Evolution is only a theory. That is correct, but it's important to understand what that means. It is also only a theory that the world goes round the Sun - it's just a theory for which there is an immense amount of evidence. There are many scientific theories that are in doubt. Even within evolution, there is some room for controversy. But that we are cousins of apes and jackals and starfish, let's say, that is a fact in the ordinary sense of the word.

  Richard Dawkins

  Cousin, Mean, People

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• The US is also unusual in the enormous scale of religious fundamentalism. The impact on understanding of the world is extraordinary. In national polls almost half of those surveyed have reported that they believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor with the ape. There are similar beliefs about the Second Coming.

  Noam Chomsky

  Religious, Believe, Men

  "Global Warming and the Future of Humanity: An Interview With Noam Chomsky and Graciela Chichilnisky". Interview with C.J. Polychroniou, www.truth-out.org. September 17, 2016.

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• What we, thanks to Jung, call "synchronicity" (coincidence on steroids), Buddhists have long known as "the interpenetration of realities." Whether it's a natural law of sorts or simply evidence of mathematical inevitability (an infinite number of monkeys locked up with an infinite number of typewriters eventually producing 'Hamlet,' not to mention 'Tarzan of the Apes'), it seems to be as real as it is eerie.

  Tom Robbins

  Buddhist, Real, Typewriters

  "The Syntax of Sorcery". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.

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• What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just that shall man be for the superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Laughing, Painful

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• Even in the important matter of cranial capacity, Men differ more widely from one another than they do from the Apes; while the lowest Apes differ as much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from Man.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Important, Doe

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.83, University of Georgia Press

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• Whatever part of the animal fabric whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison the result would be the same the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.

  Thomas Huxley

  Animal, Men, Would Be

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.116, Cambridge University Press

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• How I hate the man who talks about the 'brute creation', with an ugly emphasis on Brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden?

  W.N.P. Barbellion

  Christian, Couple, Hate

  W. N. P. Barbellion (2017). “The Journal of a Disappointed Man”, p.35, Penguin UK

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• A southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!' 'The red plague rid you!' 'Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!' 'As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you.' 'Strange stuff' 'Thou jesting monkey thou' 'Apes with foreheads villainous low' 'Pied ninny' 'Blind mole...' -The Caliban Curses

  Gary D. Schmidt

  Mother, Blow, Light

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• I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure --will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage --and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Stars, Honesty, Believe

  "This I Believe", 1952.

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• You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Children, Simple

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• For a moment she turned in a circle, staring at her hands, which she held high and useless, close to her breast. She bobbed and shambled like an ape doing a trick, and her face was the silly, bewildered face of a joker's victim. And yet she could make no move that was not beautiful. Her trapped terror was more lovely than any joy that Molly had ever seen, and that was the most terrible thing about it.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Beautiful, Silly, Moving

  Peter S. Beagle (2003). “A fine and private place: The last unicorn”

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• You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

  Terry Pratchett

  Eye, Dragons, Heartless

  "Guards! Guards!". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1989.

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• Courage~ What makes the flag on the mast to wave? What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot?~Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz

  L. Frank Baum

  Elephants, Dawn, Hot

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• The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.

  Aldous Huxley

  Kissing, Race, Squids

  Aldous Huxley (1992). “Ape and Essence: A Novel”, p.19, Ivan R. Dee

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• Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, "The mountain is, and is not." They would think, "The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.

  Terry Pratchett

  Thinking, Mountain, Want

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• It is only natural, of course, that each man should think his own opinions best: the crow loves his fledgling, and the ape his cub.

  Thomas More

  Men, Thinking, Crow

  Thomas More (2016). “More: Utopia”, p.14, Cambridge University Press

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• Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars.

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

  Stars, Bananas, Humans

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• Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

  Ben Jonson

  Time, Eye, Mirrors

  1600 Every Man out of His Humour, Induction.

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• Not a superman who stumbles, but an ape with makeshift manners in whose nickel-plated jungles roam mechanical bananas.

  William Tenn

  Humility, Bananas, Manners

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• "I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting" ... "But that's not all people laugh at." "Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh sweetheart... a joke, or anything else- but something that gave you a a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness wasn't there." He thought. "I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people."

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Hurt, Real, People

  "Stranger in a Strange Land". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, 1961.

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• Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.

  Douglas Adams

  Mixing, Males, Generations

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