Desmond Morris Quotes

Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.

The logical outcome of evolution is that it makes monsters. We turn into monsters because evolution takes away everything that makes us human in the sense of our moral accountability, our moral absolutes, and our idea of being distinct from the animal kingdom.

At some time in their careers, most good historians itch to write a history of the world, endeavor to discover what makes humanity the most destructive and creative of species.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

I'm a paleoanthropologist, and my job is to define man's place in nature and explore what makes us human.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

Many people, whether religious believers or not, were repelled by the idea that we humans are nothing more special than a species of mammal directly descended from the higher primates, and that we achieved that status by winning a long struggle, shockingly red, as Tennyson famously put it, “in tooth and claw

How like us is that filthy beast the ape.

As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man

Monkey: An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees

The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men.

Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud.

He will be an extraordinary person, that pure American, who will be standing in my place five thousand years from today. He will have what no other human being has had in just the same richness, the inheritance of all ages, all races, all cultures…. a true superman, standing on the shoulders of those from all nations and races of the earth.

Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.

Man will put foward a goal to raise himself to a new level to create a higher sicio-biological type.

The world may be driven by the same ancient impulses. We will continue to see human struggles and successes. We will witness human glory and tragedies.

Who are we? That is the big question. And essentially we are just an upright-walking, big-brained, super-intelligent ape.

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.

I believe in man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world.

Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.

I think we give human beings too much credit. We're primates, you know.

Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.

I want to talk about the nature of human beings or how we're evolving as a race.