Jimmy Buffett Quotes

Societies advance through innovation every bit as much as economies do.

Humans have always used our intelligence and creativity to improve our existence. After all, we invented the wheel, discovered how to make fire, invented the printing press and found a vaccine for polio.

I would much rather be a perfected ape than a degraded Adam. Yes, if it is shown to me that my humble ancestors were quadrupedal animals, arboreal herbivores, brothers or cousins of those who were also the ancestors of monkeys and apes, far from blushing in shame for my species because of its genealogy and parentage, I will be proud of all that evolution has accomplished, of the continuous improvement which takes us up to the highest order, of the successive triumphs that have made us superior to all of the other species ... the splendid work of progress.

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

Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.

We three have never been very good chemists but we are gratified with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Peter Principle says that everyone is promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. We are worried that we may have reached this remarkable point.

Claiming my right to follow whethersoever science should lead... it is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt.

Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me was the ability to think in quotations.

[we see that] science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.

It has taken me nearly twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public; and I am not sure that I am not still regarded as a suspicious character in some quarters.

Our ambitions are bold and so must be our desire to change and evolve our culture.

He was having more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.* *Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkeys. It had done nothing he had considered particularly entertaining, apart from emit interesting noises, and eventually, once the noises had stopped and the monkeys were no longer doing anything at all—except possibly on an organic level—had needed to be disposed of in the dead of night.

The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

God likes a little humor, as is evidence by the fact that he made the monkeys, the parrot -- and some of you people.

I think the next century will be the century of complexity.

Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.

Education is worth a whole lot. Just think - with enough education and brains the average man would make a good lawyer - and so would the average lawyer.

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

Keep your sense of humor. As General Joe Stillwell said, 'The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind'.

I've always felt that the placement of a man's testicles is an eloquent argument against intelligent design.

What's a philosopher?' said Brutha. Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.

George W. Bush gave a commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. It was pretty inspirational. He said, 'As I like to tell the 'C' students, you too can be president.' Even George W. Bush has George W. Bush comedy material in his act.

We're supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.