“The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man.”
The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)
Context: Though the large runt pigeon, with its massive beak and its huge feet, differs from its blue and barred progenitor the rock, it is a pigeon still. Though the slender Italian greyhound has a strange contrast with the short-legged bull-dog, they are both dogs in their teeth and in their skull. The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man.
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David Brewster 22
British astronomer and mathematician 1781–1868Related quotes
“Rich Cloaths, nor Cost, nor Education can
Change Nature, nor transform and Ape into a Man.”
Fab. LV: Of an Ægyptian King and his Apes
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)
“A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.”
"The Practical Farmer" http://books.google.com/books?id=njRHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22A+good+farmer+is+nothing+more+nor+less+than+a+handy+man+with+a+sense+of+humus%22&pg=PA218#v=onepage ( October 1940 http://books.google.com/books?id=SvAvAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+good+farmer+is+nothing+more+nor+less+than+a+handy+man+with+a+sense+of%22&pg=PA555#v=onepage)
One Man's Meat (1942)
Quoted in The Perfect Way in Diet by Anna Kingsford (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881), p. 14 https://archive.org/stream/perfectwayindie00kinggoog#page/n36.
“Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way…That's another piece of garbage.”
(Omitted from the original 1980 Playboy interview). Complete text of the interview in, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 2000, David Sheff, G. Barry Golson, St. Martin's Griffin; , pp. 112-113. http://books.google.com/books?id=HL7X-YyrINUC&pg=PA112&dq=%22nor+do+i+think+we+came+from+monkeys%22&hl=en&ei=ob0STqL7H8T_sQKnjtjUDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22nor%20do%20i%20think%20we%20came%20from%20monkeys%22&f=false [Originally published in October 1981 as The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yōko Ono]. http://books.google.com/books?id=UVYIAQAAMAAJ&q=%22nor+do+i+think+we+came+from+monkeys%22&dq=%22nor+do+i+think+we+came+from+monkeys%22&hl=en&ei=XsYSTpvQAaXksQLFi8WaCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAQ.Complete fragment available at EvolutionNews.org http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/john_lennon_darwin_doubter048051.html.
Playboy interview (1980)
Context: Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way... That's another piece of garbage. What the hell's it based on? We couldn't've come from anything--fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don't believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren't monkeys changing into men now? It's absolute garbage. It's absolutely irrational garbage, as mad as the ones who believe the world was made only four thousand years ago, the fundamentalists.
That and the monkey thing are both as insane as the other. I’ve nothing to base it on; it’s only a gut feeling. They always draw that progression-these apes standing up suddenly. The early men are always drawn like apes, right? Because that fits in the theory we have been living with since Darwin. I don't buy that monkey business. [Singing] "Too much monkey business..." [Laughing] I don' t buy it. I've got no basis for it and no theory to offer, I just don't buy it. Something other than that. Something simpler. I don't buy I've got no basis for it and no theory to offer, I just don't buy it. Something other than that. Something simpler. I don't buy anything other than "It always was and ever shall be." I can't conceive of anything less or more. The other theories change all the time. They set up these idols and then they knock them down. It keeps all the old professors happy in the university. It gives them something to do. I don't know if there's any harm in it except they ram it down everybody's throat. Everything they told me as a kid has already been disproved by the same type of "experts" who made them up in the first place.
Pages 153–154.
The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910), Systematic and Constructive (Book I), "Money and Exchange" (ch. 4)
Context: But neither can anything we desire be got without money, or what money represents, i. e. without the command of exchangeable things. All the things that we so often say "cannot be had for money" we might with equal truth say cannot be had or enjoyed without it. Friendship cannot be had for money, but how often do the things that money commands enable us to form and develop our friendships! … But even "waiting" requires money, if not so much as marrying does. In fact, a man can be neither a saint, nor a lover, nor a poet, unless he has comparatively recently had something to eat. The things that money commands are strictly necessary to the realisation on earth of any programme whatsoever. The range of things, then, that money can command in no case secures any of those experiences or states of consciousness which make up the whole body of ultimately desired things, and yet none of the things that we ultimately desire can be had except on the basis of the things that money can command. Hence nothing that we really want can infallibly be secured by things that can be exchanged, but neither can it under any circumstances be enjoyed without them.
As quoted in Mayor of Istanbul: Turkey badly managed refugees https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07gyxry
Self-Question, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Referring to Mr. Burns. Compare to Heart of Darkness' manager: "He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well..."
The Shadow Line (1915)