Primate Quotes

We're living in primate heaven. We're warm, dry, we're not hungry, we don't have fleas and ticks and infections. So why are we so miserable? ~ Steven Pinker

Traveling across the United States, it's easy to see why Americans are often thought of as stupid. At the San Diego Zoo, right near the primate habitats, there's a display featuring half a dozen life-size gorillas made out of bronze. Posted nearby is a sign reading CAUTION: GORILLA STATUES MAY BE HOT. Everywhere you turn, the obvious is being stated. CANNON MAY BE LOUD. MOVING SIDEWALK ABOUT TO END. To people who don't run around suing one another, such signs suggest a crippling lack of intelligence. Place bronze statues beneath the southern California sun, and of course they're going to get hot. Cannons are supposed to be loud, that's their claim to fame, and - like it or not - the moving sidewalk is bound to end sooner or later. It's hard trying to explain a country whose motto has become You can't claim I didn't warn you. What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks?

This pretty much sums up my trip to Texas. ~ David Sedaris

Utter dependence is common to all domesticates. Non-human species depend wholly on us; we depend wholly on storable, retrievable, transmissable techniques. ~ John Livingston, From "Rogue Primate: An Investigation Into Human Domestication"

We are part of nature, a product of a long evolutionary journey. To some degree, we carry the ancient oceans in our blood. ... Our brains and nervous systems did not suddenly spring into existence without long antecedents in natural history. That which we most prize as integral to our humanity - our extraordinary capacity to think on complex conceptual levels - can be traced back to the nerve network of primitive invertebrates, the ganglia of a mollusk, the spinal cord of a fish, the brain of an amphibian, and the cerebral cortex of a primate. ~ Murray Bookchin

At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how "presidential" the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the "presidential" silverback's name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, stuffing something that might have been the last of a Big Stick Popsicle or a Chiquita banana in my mouth. ~ Paul Beatty

Arboreal, a fine word. Our arboreal ancestors, Crake used to say. Used to shit on their enemies from above while perched in trees. All planes and rockets and bombs are simply elaborations on that primate instinct. ~ Margaret Atwood

On August 16, 1996, when an eight-year-old female gorilla named Binti Jua helped a three-year-old boy who had fallen eighteen feet into the primate exhibit at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo. Reacting immediately, Binti scooped up the boy and carried him to safety. She sat down on a log in a stream, cradling the boy in her lap, giving him a few gentle back pats before taking him to the waiting zoo staff. This simple act of sympathy, captured on video and shown around the world, touched many hearts, and Binti was hailed as a heroine. It was the first time in U.S. history that an ape figured in the speeches of leading politicians, who held her up as a model of compassion. ~ Frans De Waal

Our most serious obstacle is the uncontrollable urge to convert everything to the familiar, to reduce it all to the level of the primate brain; to reject the living, breathing reality of the totality of all possible attention. ~ E. J. Gold

Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the
world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behavior. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

A human head with the face and hair of a fifteen-year-old boy emerged form the body of the spider, and the abdomen filled out into something of a primate-like torso. The legs remained spindly and long. He thought he looked cool driving a car as a wolf spider. He did look cool, although it was difficult to control the car. It was important to him that he look cool while driving, although he would not have been able to articulate why. ~ Joseph Fink

Why is it that it's okay to call a white person "mate" yet it's not okay to call a black guy "primate"? ~ Frankie Boyle

[A primate ban] would force us to abandon research that could lead to treatments for Alzheimer's, motor neurone disease, strokes and many other illnesses ~ Tipu Aziz

The theory behind primate experimentation was that these animals were closer biologically to man. In the 1950's, several laboratories even attempted experiments on gorillas, going to great trouble and expense to work with these seemingly most human of animals. However, by 1960 it had been demonstrated that of the apes, the chimpanzee was biochemically more like man than the gorilla. (On the basis of similarity to man, the choice of laboratory animals is often surprising. For example, the hamster is preferred for immunological and cancer studies, since his responses are so similar to man's, while for studies of the heart ~ Anonymous

He's a monk, the fifth of his kind. I call him Monk E, and he is a primate. ~ Jarod Kintz

...for a piece of famous fluffiness that doesn't just pretend about what real lives can be like, but moves on into one of the world's least convincing pretences about what people themselves are like, consider the teased and coiffed nylon monument that is 'Imagine': surely the My Little Pony of philosophical statements. John and Yoko all in white, John at the white piano, John drifting through the white rooms of a white mansion, and all the while the sweet drivel flowing. Imagine there's no heaven. Imagine there's no hell. Imagine all the people, living life in - hello? Excuse me? Take religion out of the picture, and everybody spontaneously starts living life in peace? I don't know about you, but in my experience peace is not the default state of human beings, any more than having an apartment the size of Joey and Chandler's is. Peace is not the state of being we return to, like water running downhill, whenever there's nothing external to perturb us. Peace between people is an achievement, a state of affairs we put together effortfully in the face of competing interests, and primate dominance dynamics, and our evolved tendency to cease our sympathies at the boundaries of our tribe. ~ Francis Spufford

Unlike her closest primate cousins, the standard human female doesn't come equipped with private parts that swell up to double their normal size and turn bright red when she is about to ovulate. In ~ Christopher Ryan

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

But the largest number of primate species--thirty-four--have a promiscuous system in which females routinely associate and copulate with multiple males. ~ Jared Diamond

Access to your husband's money might feel good. But the comparative study of human society and our primate relatives shows that such access can't buy you the power you get by being the one who earns it. And knowing this, or even having an inkling of it, just sensing the disequilibrium, the abyss that separates your version of power from your man's, could keep a thinking woman up at night. ~ Wednesday Martin

As I was running back to camp, thoughts of tripping and crushing the endangered lemur crowded my head. I could see the headline, "Former NFL Cheerleader Squashes World's Smallest Primate With Her Left Breast." I slowed down just a little bit. ~ Mireya Mayor

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

PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures. ~ Christiaan Barnard

In any nation but the USA, it is taken for granted that a man of distinction, ability, wealth or power will keep a mistress and a few girlfriends on the side. Only in America, still suffering from its grotesque, hypocritical Puritan heritage, do we persist in attempting to deny and repeal a million years of basic primate biology. ~ Edward Abbey

Part of the reason for the evolutionary success of primates, human or otherwise, is that we are a pretty smart collection of animals. What's more, our thumbs work in particularly fancy and advantageous ways, and we're more flexible about food than most. But our primate essence is more than just abstract reasoning, dexterous thumbs, and omnivorous diets. Another key to our success must have something to do with this voluntary transfer process, this primate legacy of feeling an itch around adolescence. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

The left hemisphere is more sophisticated and specialized, a very late outgrowth of the primate, and especially the hominid, brain. On the other hand, it is the right hemisphere which controls the crucial powers of recognizing reality which every living creature must have in order to survive. ~ Oliver Sacks

There is a species of primate in South America more gregarious than most other mammals, with a curious behavior.The members of this species often gather in groups, large and small, and in the course of their mutual chattering , under a wide variety of circumstances, they are induced to engage in bouts of involuntary, convulsive respiration, a sort of loud, helpless, mutually reinforcing group panting that sometimes is so severe as to incapacitate them. Far from being aversive,however, these attacks seem to be sought out by most members of the species, some of whom even appear to be addicted to them.

...the species in Homo sapiens (which does indeed inhabit South America, among other places), and the behavior is laughter. ~ Daniel C. Dennett

First of all it's usually women who run these higher primate sanctuaries, rarely men. They are white. They come from privileged backgrounds. They are educated. ~ Russell Banks

They were two human primates carrying another primate. One was the master of the earth, or at least believed himself to be, and the other was a nimble dweller in trees, a cousin of the master of the earth. Both species, the human and the monkey, were in the presence of another life form, which was older and more powerful than either of them, and was a dweller in blood. ~ Richard Preston

I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. We had maintained, even exaggerated, this important flexibility of our primate forebears, while most mammals had sacrificed it in specializing their digits. Carnivores run, stab, and scratch. My cat may manipulate me psychologically, but he'll never type or play the piano. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

[Darwin] gave an answer to the tremendous question that so deeply concerns...What is Man? [He] answered this question to the effect that man is a natural product of the universe;...man is an animal, a vertebrate, a mammal, and a primate....By bringing man into the evolutionary picture, Darwin finally took the last step in our emancipation and finally made our world rational. [Yet] Darwin felt humility and awe that seem to me truly religious. ["Darwin led us into this modern world," 1959, p. 271-272.] ~ George Gaylord Simpson

Thus, I am here where poets come to drink a dark strong poison with tiny shards of ice, something to loosen my primate tongue and its syllables
of debris. I know all words come from preexisting words and divide until our pronouncements develop selves. ~ Terrance Hayes

In the world of animals, pain serves an equivocal role. Parental nips and swipes are common tools in upbringing. And socially, pain is sometimes used to maintain hierarchies of dominance. But this animal use of pain seems somewhat restrained, at least in contrast with the human situation. Here the capacity for pain is often used to systematically exploit and oppress at intensities often far beyond those seen in the behaviour of our nearest primate relatives. At the same time, at least in western culture, pain is rarely used for pleasure. Is it little wonder that all pain is viewed as intrinsically evil? Or that the pain-pleasure of leatherspace has been labelled torture? ~ Geoff Mains

So, at the turn of the third millennium, you have chosen to base your principles on a collection of contradictory texts – written by various men years after the death of your man Jesus – that have been edited and selected out of hundreds of other documents, and bound together into one hotchpotch volume, under the orders of a political primate, Pope Damasus. And, you're still content to condemn the living love I feel here and now, because of that dusty accident of bad editing? Why? ~ Cliff James

God was created by evolution, inside the imagination of a primate. ~ Steve Fowler

If we are here for any good purpose at all (other than collating texts, running rivers, and learning the stars), I suppose it is to entertain the rest of nature. A gang of sexy primate clowns. All the little critters creep in close to listen when the human beings are in a good mood and willing to play some tunes. ~ Gary Snyder

Sadly, history shows us that people literally scrambled their children's brains with heavy exposure to screens at young ages. Developing primate brains are wired to interact with others in a real environment, learning the enormous range of human behaviours from copying the people they love and trust, not staring mindlessly at images. ~ EXO Books

The somatotype of the cat or any animal from quadruped to biped partially determines the perspective of the creature. The physiology of any given creature will alter its understanding of its environment. A close look then at the physiology of cats and dogs and one biped, in particular, the primate, should give anyone a clear reason for the biological and psychological shaping of religion. This examination of cats, dogs and then other primates, humanity's cousins, in comparison with some religious ideals, will show just how physiological perspectives would and have influenced religious dogma or cat-ma as the case may be. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

Though bonobos tend to be a lot hairier than us - and they don't build houses or churches or Pentagons like we do - these primates look and act remarkably human. They often even go beyond the merely "human," and enter the realm of the truly "humane. ~ Susan Block

As a species, we tend to lie quite a bit - to ourselves and to each other. It's a primate thing. So, a reason to go into a career in science and technology, or to learn more about these subjects, is to become a more powerful person. ~ Ann Druyan

Civilization is only a pretense; in the crisis, we become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and becoming instead the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy, wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone that we'll use the moment it comes close enough. ~ Orson Scott Card

You display inordinate pride for someone who has completed a task which could have been performed by a lesser primate in a shorter time. ~ Eoin Colfer

That penetrating gaze, that intelligence; it's hard not to be anthropomorphic when you're looking at a great ape - at any primate - but especially with gorillas. They're just so magnificent. ~ K.A. Applegate

A primatologist told me you can find love in the eyes of an orangutan. It's that old primate gleam that goes back thousands of years and can penetrate the deepest gloom of the jungle. Nothing can deter that gleam, which is why we primates have survived for so long to meet and procreate. In prison, the survival of romance is not easy, but it finds a way ... In Canada, there has been a succession of romances between prisoners and female guards, nurses, librarians, and one Catholic nun who married the convict after he divorced his wife. ~ Shawn Thompson

We go to great lengths to deny our animal heritage, and not just in scientific and philosophical discourse. You can glimpse the denial in the shaving of men's faces; in clothing and other adornments; in the great lengths gone to in the preparation of meat to disguise the fact that an animal is being killed, flayed, and eaten. The common primate practice of pseudosexual mounting of males by males to express dominance is not widespread in humans, and some have taken comfort from this fact. But the most potent form of verbal abuse in English and many other languages is "Fuck you," with the pronoun "I" implicit at the beginning. The speaker is vividly asserting his claim to higher status, and his contempt for those he considers subordinate. Characteristically, humans have converted a postural image into a linguistic one with barely a change in nuance. The phrase is uttered millions of times each day, all over the planet, with hardly anyone stopping to think what it means. Often, it escapes our lips unbidden. It is satisfying to say. It serves its purpose. It is a badge of the primate order, revealing something of our nature despite all our denials and pretensions. ~ Carl Sagan

Nor do the females of our closest primate cousins offer much reason to believe the human female should be sexually reluctant due to purely biological concerns. Instead, primatologist Meredith Small has noted that female primates are highly attracted to novelty in mating. Unfamiliar males appear to attract females more than known males with any other characteristic a male might offer (high status, large size, coloration, frequent grooming, hairy chest, gold chains, pinky ring, whatever). Small writes, "The only consistent interest seen among the general primate population is an interest in novelty and variety ... In fact," she reports, "the search for the unfamiliar is documented as a female preference more often than is any other characteristic our human eyes can perceive. ~ Christopher Ryan

1. We crave meaty taste because the amphibian brain's hunger for flesh is older than the primate brain's "acquired taste" for fruits and nuts. 2. As it influenced the pursuit, handling, and killing of game, the amygdala also stimulated the release of digestive juices in preparation for eating the kill. Thus, today, hidden aggressiveness in the meat-eater's code makes a sizzling steak more exciting than a bowl of fruit. This explains, in part, why (when possible and affordable) meals throughout the world are planned around a meat dish. ~ David B. Givens

His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of
Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William
Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief
rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist,
methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society
of friends. ~ James Joyce

Human, you are a machine, an organism, an animal, a primate, an artist, an athlete, a thinker, a sponge, a spirit, a comedian, a connoisseur, a cycle of breath in and breath out, an inventor, an expressor, an orator, a lover, an explorer, a creator, evolved. Your mind paints the flowers and the sky using the mind's eye as a paintbrush and light as paint. Splashing life across the blank canvas of reality. That's what you do. Every moment of every day. ~ Laren Grey Umphlett

Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Christian, you are that because of where and when you were born. If you are an atheist, you are that because of a book or two you read, or who your parents were and the century in which you were born. Don't delude yourself: there are no good reasons for anything, just circumstances. Don't delude yourself: you may describe yourself to others by claiming a label of atheist, Jew, evangelical, gay or straight but you know that you are really lots more complicated than that, a gene-driven primate and something more. Want to be sure you have THE TRUTH about yourself and want to be consistent to that truth? Then prepare to go mad. Or prepare to turn off your brain and cling to some form or other of fundamentalism, be that religious or secular. ~ Frank Schaeffer

Pornographic novels were novels about the things primates enjoy most, namely sexual acrobatics. They were taught to feel ashamed of these natural primate impulses so that they would be guilty-furtive-submissive types and easy for the alpha males to manipulate. Those caught reading such novels were called no-good shits, of course. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

...it is part of [human nature] to comply with one another for the greater good of our social organization... ~ John Livingston, From "Rogue Primate: An Investigation Into Human Domestication"

Monogamy is not found in any social, group-living primate except - if the standard narrative is to be believed - us. ~ Christopher Ryan

It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity
in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago. ~ Steven Pinker

However, what Article VI [of the U.S. Constitution] does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. ~ Mike Huckabee

If you want to know why the human primate behaves the way it does, I can easily explain:

1. human life span
2. human physiology at each stage of life="hormones"
3. our current state of evolution (still primitive in many ways).

Humans are the only species on earth aware of their own deaths. They aren't here for long so they are very concerned with the quality of their lives more so than the quality of the lives that will come after them. It is our life spans that trap us, make us truly incapable of long-term decisions which would require sacrifice we as a species are not willing to make.

Hormones: at each life stage, we are influenced heavily by hormones-raging levels in the young male or not, descending in the middle aged man or woman. Hormones also influence our behavior.

Lastly, we are not out of the oven yet as far as evolution goes, still prone to settle our differences through primitive means--greed and violence.

Here is a thought question for you-how would things differ if the average human could expect to live 200 years instead of 70+-? ~ Virginia Arthur