Gorillas Quotes - Page 2

• [I]n Africa I was a member of a family—of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas—but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand.

  Daniel Quinn

  Zoos, Expression, Hands

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• I was doing comedy in laundry mats in 1992, literally where I would bring a little gorilla amp and a lapel mike and just start performing.

  Dane Cook

  Littles, Comedy, Laundry

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• I don't think there's anything I can't do. I have no regrets.

  Dionne Warwick

  Regret, Thinking, I Can

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• five severed fingers do not make a hand

  Daniel Quinn

  Hands, Ishmael, Fingers

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.12, Bantam

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• We've got to have major health care reform because that is the 800-pound gorilla. That is the thing that can swamp the boat fiscally for the United States.

  Kent Conrad

  United States, Reform, Swamps

  "State of the Union" with John King, www.cnn.com. March 29, 2009.

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• I meditate, and when I do, Prince Harry appears in my subconscious and meditates with me. It's a little strange but I don't think there's anything I can do about it. Sometimes he's not the only one; the other day it was me, Prince Harry, the Dalai Lama, Mr. Rogers, Coco the gorilla, and George Clooney. We were all floating above the earth looking down at the continents as they passed. George Clooney suggested I visit Providence, Rhode Island. The Dalai Lama sighed deeply and said he'd like to visit Tibet. Poor Dalai Lama.

  Kristin Cashore

  Thinking, Rhode Island, Islands

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• The gorillas are not yet sufficiently advanced in evolutionary terms to have discovered the benefits of passports, currency-declaration forms, and official bribery, and therefore tend to wander backward and forward across the border as and when their beastly, primitive whim takes them.

  Douglas Adams

  Animal, Borders, Benefits

  Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine (2011). “Last Chance to See”, p.76, Ballantine Books

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• It's hard to put into words. Gorillas are not complainers. We're dreamers, poets, philosophers, nap takers.

  Katherine Applegate

  Naps, Dreamer, Philosopher

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• When I got my very first phone call that I'd hit the 'New York Times' list, I had a small rush of 'I've made it!' But the next morning, it occurred to me I didn't know what it was, so I called my agent and asked what being a 'New York Times' bestselling author really meant. He informed me that I was now a thousand pound gorilla.

  Lisa Gardner

  Morning, New York, Phones

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• What is missing from today's dialogue is the effect autism is having on families, our society and what the unknown factors are. The 300lb. gorilla in the room is that our children with autism today will soon become adults with autism.

  Jenny McCarthy

  Children, Autism, Missing

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• Five years ago I was a four-stone apology — today I am two separate gorillas.

  Vivian Stanshall

  Apology, Years, Two

  "Song: 'Mr. Apollo'". 1969.

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• His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Names, Mountain

  Neil Gaiman (2005). “Anansi Boys”

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• When you start to do research into gorillas or any kind of apes, if you're going to play them, that's one of the biggest misconceptions. And when I did Kong, you're not doing gorilla movements, you're not doing ape movements, you're looking for a personality. It's like saying okay I'm going to do human movements.

  Andy Serkis

  Play, Personality, Research

  Source: collider.com

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• ...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?

  Peter Singer

  Emotional, Thinking, Animal

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• Mirror that lies, mirror that lies, that can't be me in the gorilla disguise.

  Jimmy Buffett

  Lying, Mirrors, Low Self Esteem

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• 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 M. Sapolsky

  Mountain, Grew Up, Baboons

  Robert M. Sapolsky (2007). “A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• I watched the gorilla's eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don't listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn't been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one.

  Douglas Adams

  Wise, Eye, Lost Ones

  Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine (2013). “Last Chance To See”, p.104, Random House

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• We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.

  Maurice Sendak

  Beautiful, Animal, Criminals

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In Africa, you know, if you're poor, at least you can go to the forest and share some mangoes with the gorillas and monkey.

  Emmanuel Jal

  Monkeys, Forests, Poor

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• Intelligence is a valuable thing, but it is not usually the key to survival. Sheer fecundity ... usually counts. The intelligent gorilla doesn't do as well as the less intelligent but more-fecund rat, which doesn't do as well as the still-less-intelligent but still-more-fecund cockroach, which doesn't do as well as the minimally-intelligent but maximally-fecund bacterium.

  Isaac Asimov

  Intelligent, Keys, Survival

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• Wild animals are not meant to be owned, any more than human beings are. Nobody has the right to pass a cougar or a gorilla on from hand to hand.

  Pat Derby

  Freedom, Animal, Hands

  Pat Derby, Peter S. Beagle (1976). “The lady and her tiger”, Dutton Books

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• I wonder whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla, although a great many resemble the latter.

  Sam Manekshaw

  Country, Badass, Army

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• I find it striking that the quality of the urban habitat of homo sapieans is so weakly researched compared to the habitats of gorillas, elephants, and Bengal tigers and panda bears in China…you hardly see anything on the habitat of man in the urban environment.

  Jan Gehl

  Men, Elephants, Quality

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• Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.

  Clay Shirky

  Life Is, Social, Primates

  Clay Shirky (2009). “Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens when People Come Together”, p.19, Penguin UK

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• The 800 pound gorilla just entered the blogosphere, with Google launching its blog search.

  Charlene Li

  Google, Pounds, Launching

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