“Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel?”
A similar remark was reportedly made by Pratchett in The Herald (4 October 2004): I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel.
"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
Context: Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.
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Terry Pratchett 796
English author 1948–2015Related quotes
“Men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.”
Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter III, "Liberty"
Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter III, "Liberty", p. 315.
“I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.”
Source: The Essence of Christianity (1841)
“I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.”
Source: The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal
“Better sit still, men say, than rise to fall.”
Book II, stanza 79
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)
“Crowley (An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards)”
Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Variant: The question is this— Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.
Variant: Is man an ape or an angel? Now, I am on the side of the angels!
Source: Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference (25 November 1864), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (1929), p. 108
1860s
Variant: The question is this— Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.
Variant: Is man an ape or an angel? Now, I am on the side of the angels!
Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference (25 November 1864), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 108.
Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 38