Jacob Bronowski Quotes

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties.

There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. All the time, we find animals doing things that, in our arrogance, we thought were just human.

Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

Anthropomorphism is such an interesting concept. It means projecting human thoughts and emotions onto an animal. Which implies that thoughts and feelings belong to humans alone. Of course, if you believe in evolution, or if you believe in the Bible, that's not so. Both evolution and the Bible tell us that we're part of a family.

Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child.

With land-roaming animals, I've just read so much about the sophistication of their emotional lives and their intelligence and the way they process information that betrays a greater intelligence.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities.

The chimpanzee study was - well, it's still going on, and I think it's taught us perhaps more than anything else to be a little humble; that we are, indeed, unique primates, we humans, but we're simply not as different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we used to think.

The restriction of studies of human intellect and character to studies of conscious states was not without influence on a scientific studies of animal psychology.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker - yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

Scientists have shown that pigs are capable of playing simple video games, learning from each other, and even learning names.

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away.

People didn't think animals thought or remembered or had minds! They most certainly do: any pet owner knows more than a lot of scientists about animals.

Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.

There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.

We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was "just human".

There are a lot of smart creatures out there. Dolphins, elephants, and whales are smart. And there are some really smart birds. I know some really intelligent fish. But they cannot know what humans know and are incapable of inflicting as much damage.

They say dogs ignore their reflections in mirrors because they can't smell them. Dogs, unlike people, are not fooled by what they see.

He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.