“Haven't seen any of the movies in which Rekha aped me. I think it is highly improbable that a lady should ape me. If it is so, then all I can say is that i am terribly flattered.”

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 12 : Man's Reason

Fauna Suecica (1746) as quoted by Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species (1999)
Context: As a natural historian according to the principles of science, up to the present time I have been not been able to discover any character by which man can be distinguished from the ape; for there are somewhere apes which are less hairy than man, erect in position, going just like him on two feet, and recalling the human species by the use they make of their hands and feet, to such an extent, that the less educated travellers have given them out as a kind of man.

Fragment xiii.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

Source: Unseen Academicals

Shock The Monkey
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (IV), Security (1982)

Man a Machine (1747)
Context: Among animals, some learn to speak and sing; they remember tunes, and strike the notes as exactly as a musician. Others, for instance the ape, show more intelligence... would it be absolutely impossible to teach the ape a language? I do not think so.<!--pp.100-102

Mobutu, asked by a German journalist to justify the expense of his Concorde while the nation's economy was in crisis. Meredith, p. 532