Primates Quotes

• I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.

  Angela Carter

  Angel, Thinking, Culture

  "The Company of Angela Carter". "Marxism Today" Magazine, January 1985.

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists.

  H. Allen Smith

  Passion, Animal, Totems

  28 Copy quote

• Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

  Roddy McDowall

  Sports, Brother, Home

  "Fictional character: Cornelius". "Planet of the Apes", www.imdb.com. February 8, 1968.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Primates will continue to play social games without the least insight into what is killing them.

  Keith Henson

  Games, Play, Killing

  20 Copy quote

• Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.

  Keith Henson

  Brain, Attention, Way

  87 Copy quote

• Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well.

  Richard Leakey

  Needs, Fruit, Nutrition

  21 Copy quote

• Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Animal, Men, Order

  George Gaylord Simpson (1959). “The Meaning of Evolution”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutan shave been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest,living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.

  Jane Goodall

  Successful, Fantastic Life, Years

  Interview with Virginia Morell, discovermagazine.com. March 28, 2007.

  152 Copy quote

  Show source

• Primates are very territorial. It is in their nature to protect their food resources as well as their females and young.

  Jane Goodall

  Female, Resources, Young

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn't be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Book, Expression, Idols

  13 Copy quote

• Primates stand at a turning point in the course of evolution. Primates are to the biologist what viruses are to the biochemist. They can be analysed and partly understood according to the rules of a simpler discipline, but they also present another level of complexity: viruses are living chemicals, and primates are animals who love and hate and think.

  Alison Jolly

  Hate, Science, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Careers, Sometimes

  9 Copy quote

• The evolutionary struggle for survival is really a self-serving series of blows and stabs, and yet it can lead to extremely social animals like dolphins, wolves or, for that matter, primates.

  Frans de Waal

  Struggle, Animal, Blow

  7 Copy quote

• The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Emotional, Average, Games

  26 Copy quote

• One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

  Carl Sagan

  Hierarchy, Dominance, Argument

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.52, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather cheering one.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Cheer, Thinking, Discovery

  "Christmas with Christopher Hitchens". Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. December 20, 2007.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To assert that the universe has a purpose implies the universe has intent. And intent implies a desired outcome. But who would do the desiring? And what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable? Or that sentient primates are life's neurological pinnacle? Are answers to these questions even possible without expressing a profound bias of human sentiment? Of course humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So if the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Profound, Cosmos, Purpose

  55 Copy quote

• If anybody wants to believe they're the descendants of a primate, they're welcome to do it.

  Mike Huckabee

  Atheist, Believe, Want

  "Evolution not 'just a theory', and yes, Huckabee it does matter" by Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, www.wired.com. January 8, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the great commandments of science is: 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'

  Carl Sagan

  Argument, Authority, Mistrust

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.52, Ballantine Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don't have what we call intelligence, and they're surviving just fine.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Animal, Intelligent, Thinking

  Interview with Peter Tyson, www.pbs.org. September 28, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It must be stressed that there is nothing insulting about looking at people as animals. We are animals, after all. Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a biological phenomenon dominated by biological rules, like any other species. Human nature is no more than one particular kind of animal nature. Agreed, the human species is an extraordinary animal; but all other species are also extraordinary animals, each in their own way, and the scientific man-watcher can bring many fresh insights to the study of human affairs if he can retain this basic attitude of evolutionary humility.

  Desmond Morris

  Attitude, Humility, Men

  Desmond Morris (1977). “Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior”

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Kids have *_____ never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.

  Dave Barry

  Dad, Teenager, Taken

  8 Copy quote

• My first job was actually as a social worker. And then later, I got my PhD in anthropology. And I've always been interested in humans as well as primates. We are all kind of have the same emotions, the same goals and lives really. But to me, when I first got to Madagascar I realized that the lemurs lives are very closely related to what the humans are doing; partially because they've got both looking for natural resources. And if we can make some way that both humans and lemurs can live together peaceably and happily, that would be my goal for Madagascar.

  Patricia Wright

  Jobs, Goal, Together

  7 Copy quote

• Studies of reconciliation in primates have demonstrated that if the relationship value increases between two parties they are more willing to make peace.

  Frans de Waal

  Party, Two, Study

  "Frans de Waal on Political Apes, Science Communication, and Building a Cooperative Society". Interview with Eric Michael Johnson, blogs.scientificamerican.com. July 11, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension over who would control the remote.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Sex, Issues, Foraging

  7 Copy quote