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Primates Quotes

Browse 122 quotes about Primates.

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Primates Quotes

“When gorillas smell danger, they run around and call out to the rest of the primates in the jungle to warn them something evil is coming. And when one of their own dies, they mourn for days while beating themselves up in sadness for failing to save that gorilla, even if the cause of death was natural. And when one colony is mourning, their chilling echoes migrate to other colonies — and those neighbors, even if they are territorial rivals, will also grieve with them. When faced with a common danger, rivals turn into allies. And when faced with death, the loss of just one gorilla becomes the loss of the entire jungle.”

PeopleDeathEvilNatureLossCompassionDangerUnityMourningSympathyWarningEchoesJungleRivalsEnemiesColonySuzy KassemPrimatesGorillasNeighborsRelationsCommon EnemyMigrateGrieveRival
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Increasingly we come to understand that any difference between human and nonhuman primates does not necessarily show humans in a complimentary light.”

CompassionPrimatesAnimal EthicsAnimal BehaviorAnimal StudiesEthics And ScienceAnimal ExperimentationHuman Beings InjusticeAnimal Cognition
Book:Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary
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“Apes do evidently understand what others are doing, and they can prudently do the same, in which sense they "cooperate"—for their own reasons. But they lack the ability to symbolically par­ticipate in others' existence and thus communalize their own. [...] "Traditional models of economic decision-making assume that peo­ple are self-interested rational maximizers. Empirical research has demonstrated, however, that people will take into account the inter­est of others and are sensitive to norms of cooperation and fairness. [...] Here we show that in an ultimatum game, humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), are rational maximizers and are not sensitive to fairness. These results support the hypothesis that other-regarding preferences and aversion to inequitable outcomes, which play key roles in human social organization, distinguish us from our clos­est living relatives." {Jensen, Call, and To masello 2007, 107; see also Jensen et al. 2006) So much, then, for the dismal economic science—whose future is not bright either, inasmuch as chimpanzees are disappearing.”

EmpathyEconomicsDecision MakingHuman BehaviorRationalityPrimatesUtilitarianismPrimitivismMutuality Of Being
Book:What Kinship Is-And Is Not
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“What … what other species are still endangered?” asked Ponter. Mary shrugged a little. “Lots of kinds of birds. Giant tortoises, Panda bears. Sperm whales, Chim…” “Chim?” said Ponter. “What are---?” He tilted his head, perhaps listening to Hak providing its best guess at the word Mary had started to say. “Oh, no. No. Chimpanzees? But … these are our cousins. You hunt our cousins?” Mary felt all of two feet tall. How could she tell him that chimps were killed for food, that gorillas were murdered so their hands could be made into exotic ashtrays? “They are invaluable,” continued Ponter. “Surely you, as a geneticist, must know that. They are the only close living relatives we have; we can learn much about ourselves by studying them in wild, by examining their DNA.” “I know,” said Mary, softly. “I know.” Ponter looked at Reuben, then at Louise, and then at Mary, sizing them up, it seemed, as if he were seeing them—really seeing them—for the first time. “You kill with abandon,” he said. “You kill entire species. You even kill other primates.” He paused and looked from face to face again, as if giving them a chance to forestall what he was about to say, to come up with a logical explanation, a mitigating factor. But Mary said nothing, and neither did the other two, and so Ponter went on. “And, on this world, my kind is extinct.”

KillChimpanzeesPrimatesHominidsExtinctCousins
Book:Hominids
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“Many humans would experiment on nonhumans in the hope of saving a loved one, and they would just as readily experiment on humans to sustain that same hope.”

Animal LiberationPrimatesVivisectionAnimal StudiesEthics And ScienceAnimal ExperimentationAnimal ExploitationEthics And AnimalsEthics And Medicine
Book:Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary
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“We are morally required to stop systematically exploiting others, whether chimpanzees or pygmy lemurs, chickens or chinchillas. Nonhuman animals are also persons who fare better or worse depending on the way we treat them, we must begin to give them the respect and dignity that persons deserve”

ExploitationPrimatesAnimal EthicsVivisectionAnimal StudiesEthics And ScienceAnimal ExperimentationEthics And Animals
Book:Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary
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“If we are going to save endangered primates, we must first recognize that they are individuals much like human beings, who prefer to be free to live their lives independent of exploitation.”

Animal RightsAnimal LiberationPrimatesAnimal EthicsAnimal BehaviorAnimal StudiesAnimal ExploitationEndangered PrimatesAnimal Cognition
Book:Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary
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“Getting even was the basis of many primate semantic confusions, such as"expropriating the expropriators," "an absolute crime demands an absolute penalty," "they did it to me so I can do it to them," and, in general, the emotional mathematics of "one plus one equals zero" (1 + 1 = 0). The primates were so dumb they didn't realize that one plus one equals two (1 + 1 = 2) and one murder plus one murder equals two murders, one crime plus one crime equals two crimes, etc.”

ViolenceCrimeStupidityRevengePrimatesVendettaMatemathics
Book:Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy
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“As I sit, my back leaning against a damp, moss-covered tree trunk, my eyes sweeping the canopy above, my ears straining to catch the crack of a distant branch that betrays an orangutan moving in the treetops, I think about how we humans search for God. The tropical rain forest is the most complex thing an ordinary human can experience on this planet. A walk in the rain forest is a walk into the mind of God.”

ReligionNaturePrimates
Book:Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo
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“Much of human behavior can be explained by watching the wild beasts around us. They are constantly teaching us things about ourselves and the way of the universe, but most people are too blind to watch and listen.”

HumansReligionUniverseLanguageUnderstandingNatureEducationTeachSocietyTeachingHuman NatureIgnoranceCreaturesBlindWildernessEducateAnimalsPrimitiveHuman BehaviorNatural WorldWildlifeListenWildPrimatesWild And FreeBehavioral PsychologyAnimal BehaviorZooBeastsWild Life
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Nonhuman primates have been crowded out of diminishing forests, hunted for food or “medicine,” kidnapped for the lucrative pet/tourist trade, and bred for science. As a result, every primate species on the planet—aside from human beings—is either endangered or threatened.”

Animal RightsSustainabilityAnimal LiberationPrimatesAnimal EthicsEndangered SpeciesEnvironmental EthicsAnimal ExploitationEndangered PrimatesEthics And Animals
Book:Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary
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“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.”

StatesChurchEnglandGentlemanContributionPalacesAmiableInvoluntaryPrimatesAbbeyWestminsterCanterburyWestminster Abbey
Book:The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
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“The Jackdaw sat in the Cardinal's chair! Bishop and Abbot and Prior were there, Many a monk and many a friar, Many a knight and many a squire, With a great many more of lesser degree,-- In sooth a goodly company; And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee. Never, I ween, Was a prouder seen, Read of in books or dreamt of in dreams, Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims.”

BookDreamCompanyLordDegreesKneesSatGreat MenChairsMonkKnightsBishopsCardinalsPrimatesFriarsSquires
Author:Richard Harris Barham
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“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.”

YearsIdeasBigsProcessBrainMillionsGreaterHappenedTreeParticularEvolutionIntellectualAdvantageYears AgoSpeciesComplexityTree Of LifePrimatesTwigsOld Ideas
Author:Steven Pinker
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“Contrary to general belief, humans imitate apes more than the reverse. The sight of monkeys or apes induces an irresistible urge in people to jump up and down, exaggeratedly scratch themselves and holler in a way that must make the primates wonder how this otherwise so intelligent species has come to depend on such inferior means of communication.”

PeopleWayHumansMeanBeliefWonderCommunicationDependsSightIntelligentSpeciesContraryUrgesReverseInferiorsMonkeysScratchesUp And DownApesIrresistiblePrimatesMeans Of Communication
Author:Frans de Waal
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“The genetic stage of a gene pool can be identified by the personality characteristics of the local God. Jehovah of Genesis is a low-level barbarian macho punk God. He boastfully claims to have created the heaven and the stars and the world, but provides no technical details or replicable blueprints. His preoccupations, whims, anxieties, jealousies, rules and hatred of women are primitive mammalian brain. His petty prides are primate.”

WorldHeavenStarsLevelsBrainStagePridePersonalityAnxietyLowsHatredClaimsDetailsLocalsCharacteristicsPoolGenesPunkPrimitivePettyGenesisWhimBarbariansPreoccupationJehovahBlueprintsMachoPrimatesLow Level
Book:Evolutionary Agents
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“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 IS ABOUT TO END. To people who don't run around suing one another, such signs suggest a crippling lack of intelligence.”

PeopleMayMadeEndsStatesRunningAmericaMovingTurnsReadingEasyUnitedHalfUnited StatesStupidHotSizeObviousLoudDozenDisplayCautionStatuesZoosSidewalkHabitatCannonsBronzePrimatesGorillasSan DiegoSuingLife Size
Book:Me Talk Pretty One Day
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“We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.”

LongStillsTodayDifferencesResultsCommonGreaterShareProductsEvolutionBirthThousandCreaturesBehaviorFellowsPlantSpeciesPatternsAppearanceHeritageSimplestAdaptationAncestryLiving CreaturesPrimatesMutationMicrobesBehavior PatternsExternal Appearance
Author:Fred Hoyle
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“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.”

WayYearsHas BeensSuccessfulEnvironmentHarmonyForestsFantasticDestroyingChimpanzeesPrimatesGorillasOverpopulationWoods And ForestsOrangutansFantastic Life
Author:Jane Goodall
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“None of the three great apes is considered ancestral to modern man, Homo sapiens, but they remain the only other type of extant primate with which human beings share such close physical characteristics. From them we may learn much concerning the behavior of our earliest primate prototypes, because behavior, unlike bones, teeth, or tools, does not fossilize.”

MenHumansMayDoeThreeHuman BeingsShareModernTypeBehaviorToolsBonesTeethCharacteristicsBiologyWildlifeApesHomo SapiensModern ManPrimatesPrototype
Book:Gorillas in the Mist
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“Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised; honours, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as the price of an episcopal vote; and the condemnation of the Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore the peace and union of the catholic church.”

ChurchLibertyHistoryVoteCatholicUnionsCorruptionAcceptedHonourSymptomsCatholic ChurchCondemnationRoman EmpireInfallibleImmunityPrimates
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“We belong to that order of mammals, the primates, distinguished by its propensity for repeated single litters, intense parental care, long life-spans, late sexual maturity, and a complex and extensive social existence... Our protracted biological and psychological helplessness, which extends well into the third year of life, intensifies the bond between infant and parents, making possible a sense of generational continuity. In contrast to other primates these bonds are not obliterated after sexual maturity.”

YearsWellsLongCareOrderSocialParentExistenceLateThirdsComplexesIntensePsychologicalMaturityContrastInfantLong LifeDistinguishedContinuityHelplessnessParentalBondingPropensityMammalsPrimatesLife SpanYears Of Life
Book:Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood
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