“Not to be confused with his grandson, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury.”
“A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather.”
One account of his famous response to Samuel Wilberforce, who during a debate had sarcastically questioned: "whether he was descended from an ape on his grandmother's side or his grandfather's" (30 June 1860), as quoted in Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley F.R.S (1900) edited by Leonard Huxley. There were no precise transcripts of this exchange made at the time, but only various accounts which were made afterwards, in the journals and memoirs of others. Other accounts assert that after Wilberforce's query he declared to Sir Benjamin Brodie "The Lord hath delivered him into my hands" rose from his seat, gave a thorough defense of Darwin's theories, and at the end concluded: "I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth."
If the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.
Response, as quoted in Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977) by Alan L. Mackay.
The Bishop rose, and in a light scoffing tone, florid and he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey? On this Mr Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, he stood before us, and spoke those tremendous words — words which no one seems sure of now, nor I think, could remember just after they were spoken, for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. No one doubted his meaning and the effect was tremendous. One lady fainted and had to carried out: I, for one, jumped out of my seat; and when in the evening we met at Dr Daubeney's, every one was eager to congratulate the hero of the day.
Another account, by Mrs. Isabella Sidgwick in "A Grandmother's Tales"; Macmillan's Magazine LXXVIII, No. 468 (October 1898)
1860s
Context: A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there was an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them with aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.
Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism <!-- p. 92 -->
Context: Egocentrism in so far as it means confusion of the ego and the external world, and egocentrism in so far as it means lack of cooperation, constitute one and the same phenomenon. So long as the child does not dissociate his ego from the suggestions coming from the physical and from the social world, he cannot cooperate, for in order to cooperate one must be conscious of one's ego and situate it in relation to thought in general. And in order to become conscious of one's ego, it is necessary to liberate oneself from the thought and will of others. The coercion exercised by the adult or the older child is therefore inseparable from the unconscious egocentrism of the very young child.
"The transition to democracy was based on a base of harmony and little remembrance." (It was good that the Transition) "[...] was like that, because at the time the wounds were still open. That problem affected an entire generation of Spaniards. However, the generation that I come from is drawn to politics in a context of democracy and liberty, and now it's only fair that the sacrifices that many people made are recognised and that people know exactly what happened to their relatives, because it's their right [...] this right doesn't involve looking back with a grudge, but completely the opposite: it means looking back with serenity, to find out the truth [...] it means building a stronger country, a country that can look at all of its citizens with absolute serenity, so that they feel recognised in our project of contemporary democracy".
Interview in 2005 in the book "Zapatero and the Citizens' World" by Calamai and Garzia.
As President, 2005
“A conservative is someone who does not think he is morally superior to his grandfather.”
Quote from The Howard Era.
"The Idol's Eye", The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) p. 32.
“His theory of golf is, never play any sport that requires you to dress as your grandfather.”
Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 20 (p. 249).
The Steve Malzberg Show
2011-02-28
Radio, quoted in * Eric
Hananoki
Huckabee: Obama Grew Up "In Kenya"
2011-03-01
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201103010018
2011-03-02
About Barack Obama, who grew up in Hawaii and did not visit Kenya until his adulthood, despite rumours and innuendos which imply otherwise and have been circulated since his nomination to run for the US Presidency
Standup Comic (1999)
