“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

— Terry Pratchett , book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

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Terry Pratchett 796

English author 1948–2015

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“Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel?”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

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.
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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.

“The sick chamber is the place where the most angelic virtues of the human race have ever been called into action.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) (1802–1871) Scottish publisher and writer

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Context: The sick chamber is the place where the most angelic virtues of the human race have ever been called into action. The meek patience of the sufferer—the endurance and the active benevolence of those who would not barter that sick room, with its gloom and silence, for all the glitter and the grandeur that human ambition displays beyond its walls—are among the finest objects that the philosophic eye can look on. So in every well-regulated household, each deathbed, if it carry with it the memory of broken ties and deserted seats at the social board, calls up also the recollection of duties fulfilled, of charities administered, of overflowing affection, ashamed to speak its strength, showing itself in strong deeds of unwearied assiduity.

“There's no such thing as a genius in politics, or at least I have never met one. There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.”

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“Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

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“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)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

“It has already been observed that women, wherever placed, however high or low in the scale of cultivation, hold the destinies of human kind. Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

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“What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance the most astounding? That question is this—Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

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

“What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance the most astounding? That question is this— Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

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.

“[Saying that humans are related to apes is] an insult to apes. Experts say that violence is unknown among the creatures. They are generally gentle. They don't need to be continually policed so that they don't rape and murder like progressive man.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

“The missing link between an ape and a human are we.”

Rolf Arnkil (1923–1964)

Original: (fi) Puuttuva rengas ihmisen ja apinan välillä olemme me.

Suuri Sitaattisanakirja. Toimittanut Jarkko Laine. Helsinki: Otava, 1989. ISBN 951-1-10961-8

“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

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Terry Pratchett 796

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