Chimpanzees Quotes - Page 3

An evolutionary biologist and a fundamentalist may see the same chimpanzee sitting in a cage, but in another important way, they do not. And they may approach the details of their lives in very different ways.

Peg O'Connor

Important, Sitting, May

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.

Jane Goodall

Unique, Years, Skeletons

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It was both fascinating and appalling to learn that chimpanzees were capable of hostile and territorial behavior that was not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare.

Jane Goodall

Warfare, Behavior, Form

Jane Goodall, Phillip Berman (1999). “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey”, p.86, Hachette UK

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I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in '86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

Jane Goodall

Communication, Teaching, Writing

"New mission for chimps' champion". Interview with Ros Coward, www.theguardian.com. October 10, 2004.

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To see Stephen Spender fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

Evelyn Waugh

Book, Hands, Vases

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As our closest relatives, they (chimpanzees) tell us special things about what it means to be a primate and, ultimately, what it means to be a human at the DNA level.

Francis Collins

Mean, Dna, Special

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The suffix 'naut' comes from the Greek and Latin words for ships and sailing. Astronaut suggests 'a sailor in space.' Chimponaut suggests 'a chimpanzee in sailor pants'.

Mary Roach

Latin, Space, Sailing

Mary Roach (2011). “Packing for Mars”, p.198, Oneworld Publications

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There are some circumstances, for example, where the newborn baby is severely disabled and where the parents think that it's better that child should not live, when killing the newborn baby is not at all wrong ... not like killing the chimpanzee would be.

Peter Singer

Baby, Children, College

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When you think of intelligence, don't think of a college professor; think of human beings as opposed to chimpanzees. If you don't have human intelligence, you're not even in the game.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Thinking, College, Games

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The chimpanzee and the human share about 99.5 percent of their evolutionary history, yet most human thinkers regard the chimp as a malformed, irrelevant oddity, while seeing themselves as stepping stones to the Almighty.

Robert Trivers

Oddities, Atheism, Stones

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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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Once we ask why it should be that all human beings - including infants, the intellectually disabled, criminal psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, and the rest - have some kind of dignity or worth that no elephant, pig, or chimpanzee can ever achieve, we see that this question is as difficult to answer as our original request for some relevant fact that justifies the inequality of humans and other animals.

Peter Singer

Animal, Pigs, Elephants

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If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as 'human rights'? How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder?

Carl Sagan

Smart, Animal, Rights

Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.126, Ballantine Books

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We’ve got ninety-nine per cent the same genes as any other person. We’ve got ninety per cent the same as a chimpanzee. We’ve got thirty per cent the same as a lettuce. Does that cheer you up at all? I love about the lettuce. It makes me feel I belong.

Caryl Churchill

Cheer, Ninety Nine, Doe

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It is not only visitors to the zoo who are fascinated but uneasy in the presence of chimpanzees; the same is true of scientists. The more they learn about these great apes, the deeper our identity crisis seems to become. The resemblance between humans and chimpanzees is not only external. If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee’s eyes, an intelligent, self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?

Frans de Waal

Zoos, Eye, Animal

Frans de Waal (2007). “Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes”, p.3, JHU Press

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The fact that all our ape cousins - chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - can acquire signs - is powerful evidence that our hominid ancestors' first language was gestural and that the vocal version of language was a relatively recent development. My own guess is that vocal language began emerging about 200,000 years ago.

Roger Fouts

Cousin, Powerful, Years

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Louis [Leakey] was anxious to initiate a scientific study of these chimpanzees. It would be difficult, he emphasized, for nothing was known; there were no guidelines for such a field study; and the habitat was remote and rugged. Dangerous wild animals would be living there, and chimpanzees themselves were considered at least four times stronger than humans. I remember wondering what kind of scientist he would find for such a herculean task.

Jane Goodall

Science, Animal, Stronger

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I had a foretaste of another, larger kind of knowledge: one I believe human beings will be able to access in ever larger numbers in the future. But conveying that knowledge now is rather like a chimpanzee, becoming a human for a single day to experience all of the wonders of human knowledge, and then returning to one's chimp friends and trying to tell them what it was like knowing several different Romance languages, the calculus, and the immense scale of the universe.

Eben Alexander

Believe, Numbers, Knowing

"Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife". Book by Eben Alexander, October 23, 2012.

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Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.

Russell Baker

War, Thinking, Opposites

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Chimpanzees, typically, kiss and embrace after fights. They first make eye contact from a distance to see the mood of the others. Then they approach and kiss and embrace.

Frans de Waal

Distance, Eye, Fighting

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What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Moving, Angel, Fighting

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If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good - and CARES about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.

Frank Zappa

Atheist, Book, Love You

Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.301, Simon and Schuster

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A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.

Jaco Pastorius

Music, Play, Way

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Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

Kurt Vonnegut

Crazy, Kids, Fighting

"Cold Turkey" by Kurt Vonnegut, inthesetimes.com. May 10, 2004.

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And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.

Mark Haddon

Zoos, Believe, Animal

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". Book by Mark Haddon, 2003.

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