“Put another way, the chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but humans.”

— Jared Diamond, book The Third Chimpanzee

The Third Chimpanzee (1991)
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1991)

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Jared Diamond33

American scientist and author 1937

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“We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes — the gibbons and orangutans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans but excludes humans.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)
Source: A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love

“The big toe is the most human part of the human body, in the sense that no other element of this body is as differentiated from the corresponding element of the anthropoid ape (chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan or gibbon).”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939

“An arresting book that casts political science out the window and explains leadership through comparisons with chimpanzees, baboons and gorillas.”

Arnold M. Ludwig

Washington Post Book World, review of King of the Mountain.

“Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Baltimore Evening Sun (4 April 1927)
1920s

““The hell with the human race!” said Beatrice.
“You’re a member of it, you know,” said Rumfoord.
“Then I’d like to put in for a transfer to the chimpanzees!” said Beatrice. “No chimpanzee husband would stand by while his wife lost all her coconuts.””

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 2 “Cheers in the Wirehouse” (p. 52)

“Well, in some ways we’re not successful at all. We’re destroying our home. That’s not a bit successful. Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have 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.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

In response to: "If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?" Discover Magazine interview with Virginia Morell (28 March 2007)

“Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)
Context: 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.

“There has been little morphological evidence offered since Darwin in support of the relatedness of humans and one or both of the African apes, but that, when the relationships among the extant humanoids are investigated cladistically in an evaluation of more than 200 morphological features, there are well over twice as many morphological synapomorphies in support of uniting humans with the orang-utan as with the African ape clad and very few in support of uniting the chimpanzee more closely with humans than with the gorilla.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

Orang-utan Biology (1988)

“Marriage is an estate of long duration, and one which should not be entered into lightly or without the approval of our closest friends and relatives.”

Marguerite de Navarre book Heptaméron

Mariage est un état de si longue durée, qu'il ne doit être commencé légèrement, ne sans l'opinion de nos meilleurs amis et parents.
Fourth Day, Novel XL (trans. P. A. Chilton)
L'Heptaméron (1558)

“I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don't believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . .”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

In a letter written from Markree Castle, Sligo to his wife dated July 4th 1860. Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memoirs https://archive.org/details/charleskingsleyh00kingiala/page/308 (1877)

“Put another way, the chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but humans.”

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