“The ape, vilest of beasts, how like to us!”

— Ennius

As quoted by Cicero in De Natura Deorum, Book I, Chapter XXXV
Variant translation: How like us is that ugly brute, the ape!

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 26, 2024. History

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Ennius23

Roman writer -239–-169 BC

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“What an ugly beast is the ape, and how like us.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,
Externally devoted apes, base snites,
Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme
Context: Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,
Externally devoted apes, base snites,
Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns,
Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons:
Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts,
Slipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants,
Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls,
Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls,
Fomenters of divisions and debates,
Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits.

“Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don't feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence.”

V.S. Ramachandran book The Tell-Tale Brain

BBC Reith Lectures, quoted in p. 291
The Tell-Tale Brain (2010)

“Those who live by bread alone will submit, for the sake of it, to the vilest abuse, like a hungry dog.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

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“You’re not an ape, use a tool!”

Steve Perry (1947) American writer

Source: The Vastalimi Gambit (2013), Chapter 7

“But it would be enough that, when riding beasts, they behave like men and not like beasts.”

Bem Cavalgar (1391–1438) King of Portugal

Part II

“The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there”

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Context: The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

“Like an ape? A primate?…You said it, you said it.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) American artist

On being asked whether his artwork was a form of primal expressionism in “How Jean-Michel Basquiat predicted our identity-obsessed digital age” https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/jean-michel-basquiat in GQ (2017 Sep 20)

“I assume he was descended from apes like all the rest of us, but clearly in his case it had been a fairly gentle slope.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

“Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans are apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008) <br class="br">Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

“The ape, vilest of beasts, how like to us!”

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