Quotes about monkey (245 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)

Star , Understanding , Universe

“Look at that little monkey run!”

Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster

During the Halftime Highlights segment of Monday Night Football on September 24, 1973 when describing a 97-yard kickoff return by Washington Redskins player Herb Mul-Key against the St. Louis Cardinals.

“If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“OK, you trained monkeys, everybody jump up and down. Let's bring back the good old pogo!”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

1993-12-31 at Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, California, in between "About a Girl" and "Lithium".
Stage banter

Training

“Oh, Zoeybird, did I call your mother's husband a damn turd monkey outloud?'
'Yes, Grandma, you did.'
She looked at me, her dark eyes sparkling. 'Good.”

P. C. Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

Grandma

“That man is such a damn turd monkey."
"Grandma!" I said.
"Oh, Zoeybird, did I just call your mother's husband a damn turd monkey out loud?"
"Yes, Grandma, you did."
She looked at me, her dark eyes sparkling. "Good.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Grandma

“Monkey bar," Annabeth said. "I'm great at these." She leaped onto to the first rung and start swinging her way across. She was scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Death , Way

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

People , Intelligence , Time

“That man is such a damn turd monkey."
"Grandma!" I said.
"Oh, Zoeybird, did I call your mother's husband a damn turd monkey out loud?"
"Yes, Grandma, you did."
She looked at me, her dark eyes sparkling. "Good.”

Kristin Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

Grandma

“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy

Art , Democracy , Science

“What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Autobiographical Dictation (1906).
Variant: The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.

Disappointment

“Forests in the day are friendly places. They remind you of Sunday walks, swooshing leaves, holding a parent's big, warm hand, or providing that hand yourself. At night the woods take the gloves off and remind you why you're nervous in the dark. Night forests say "Go find a cave, monkey-boy, this place is not for you."”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 1

Boy , Parent , Night

“Dragon is the category of primate predator. Predator is a weird category, right? Because there's crocodiles in it, and then there's lions. And they don't have much in common except that they eat you. So it's a functional category. So the dragon is the imagistic representation of the functional category of predator. It's like this: If you're a monkey, then a bird will pick you off, like an eagle. That's the wings. If it wasn't an eagle, then it was a cat (dragon claws), because they climb trees and give you a good chomping. And if it wasn't a cat, then you go down to the ground and a snake would get you, or maybe the snake would climb up the tree. So a dragon is a cat-snake-bird. And that's the thing that you really want to avoid. An the other thing is that it breathes fire, which is interesting because fire was both greatest friend and greatest enemy of humanity.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Cats , Bird , Tree

“Materialistic people are sometimes called sudras, or descendants of monkeys, due to their monkey like intelligence. They do not care to know how the evolutionary process is taking place, nor are they eager to know what will happen after they finish their small human life span. This is the attitude of sudras. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s mission, this Krishna consciousness movement, is trying to elevate sudras to the brahmana platform so that they will know the real goal of life. Unfortunately, being overly attached to sense gratification, materialists are not serious in helping this movement. Instead, some of them try to suppress it. Thus it is the business of monkeys to disturb the activities of the brahmanas.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, Canto 5, Chapter 14, verse 31. (1999)

Life , People , Intelligence , Business

“Mr. Clerselier has written me that you are expecting from him my Meditations… in order to present them to the queen of the land. …If I had only been as wise as they say the savages persuaded themselves that the monkeys were, I never would have become known as a maker of books: Since it is said that they imagined that the monkeys could indeed speak, if they wanted to, but that they chose not to so lest they be forced to work. And since I had not the same prudence to abstain from writing, I now have neither as much liesure nor as much peace as I would have had if I had kept quiet. But since the mistake has already been made, and since I am now known by an infinity of people at the academy, who look askance at my writings and scour them for means of harming me, I do have great hope of being known to persons of great merit, whose power and virtue could protect me.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Letter to Pierre Chanut (Nov. 1, 1646) as quoted by Amir Aczel, Descartes' Secret Notebook (2005) citing René Descartes: Correspondance avec Elizabeth et autres lettres (1989) ed., Jean-Marie and M. Beysaade, pp. 245-246.

People , Books , Peace , Hope

“Read the history to know that yesterday’s Jews are evil predecessors and today’s Jews are worse successors. They an ingrate people, they altered God’s words, worshipped calf, killed Messengers and denied their Messages. They are exiled people and the worst of mankind. Allaah cursed them and cast His wrath upon them. He turned some of them to monkeys and pigs and worshippers of creatures. They are worst in position and are astray from the right path…”

Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais (1962) Imam in Mecca

Shaykh Abdur Rahmaan As-Sudays, 2007-03-19, April 19, 2002, www.alharamainsermons.org http://www.alharamainsermons.org/eng/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=71,.

God , People , History , Evil

“It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

C’est une grande question parmi eux s’ils [les africains] sont descendus des singes ou si les singes sont venus d’eux. Nos sages ont dit que l’homme est l’image de Dieu: voilà une plaisante image de l’Être éternel qu’un nez noir épaté, avec peu ou point d’intelligence! Un temps viendra, sans doute, où ces animaux sauront bien cultiver la terre, l’embellir par des maisons et par des jardins, et connaître la route des astres il faut du temps pour tout.
Les Lettres d'Amabed (1769): Septième Lettre d'Amabed http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/21/10AMABED.html
Citas

Love , Men , God , Star

“Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way…That's another piece of garbage.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

(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.

Way , Thinking

“It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.”

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.
"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
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 French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

Coffee , Drink

“Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did. To see those, those monkeys from those African countries— damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Source: In a phone call to Richard Nixon about a television clip which showed members of the Tanzanian delegation dancing on the UN floor, after the UN voted to recognize China and expel Taiwan. https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/white-house-tapes/013 Conversation 013-008 of the White House Tapes, 6:30, quoted in * 2019-07-30

The Atlantic note: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/ and in Ronald Reagan called Africans at UN 'monkeys', tapes reveal https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49177034, 31 July 2019, BBC note: 1970s

Shoe , Night , Country

“The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Autobiographical Dictation (1906)

God , Disappointment

“We are no longer your monkeys.”

Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961) Congolese Prime Minister, cold war leader, executed

The new leaders of Africa https://archive.org/details/newleadersofafri0000unse/page/150/mode/2up Rolf Italiaander, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall 1690, p 158. Patrice Lumumba shouted during the Speech of King Baudouin at the Ceremony of the Proclamation of the Congo's Independence in Leopoldville on June 30, 1960.

“I rather wonder what I am doing here. I enjoy city life, you know. The glittering lights, the constant companionship, the liquid entertainment. The lack of sudden monkeys.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Life , Light

“People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

People

“Little red wagon, little red bike, I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“I can’t believe you grew up and ate a monkey. Worse, I can’t believe I let a guy who ate a monkey kiss my mouth.”
Honey, I kissed more than your mouth.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: I'm In No Mood For Love

Guy , Kiss

“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

Source: "Quick Quotations" in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)
Context: The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands.

Way , Quotes

“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.
We are monkeys with money and guns.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Interview All Songs Considered, NPR, May 20, 2008

Money , Happiness , Wealth , Knowledge

“Hello, companion," said Magnus.

The monkey made a terrible sound, half snarl and half hiss.

"I begin to rather doubt the beauty of our friendship," said Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Magnus Bane to a monkey in 1791, p. 12.
Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Context: He paused and admired the bromeliads, huge iridescent flower-like bowls made out of petals, shimmering with color and water. There were frogs inside the jewel-bright recesses of the flowers.
Then he looked up into the round brown eyes of a monkey.
'Hello, companion,' said Magnus.
The monkey made a terrible sound, half snarl and half hiss.
'I begin to rather doubt the beauty of our friendship,' said Magnus.

Friendship , Beauty

“The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Life , Alcohol , Sex , Cheating

“Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed because we didn't have any. It is like monkeys in a zoo. They die. You know, everything needs to be left alone.”

George Harrison book I, Me, Mine

Source: I, Me, Mine

“Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“I’m just kinda tired. Like a monkey in the rain.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Let's do it. Monkeys are always funny. You pretty much can't go wrong with a monkey, right? Hi paused. Well unless that monkey wants you dead, or does needle drugs or something. Then it's wrong, and a bad monkey.”

Kathy Reichs Virals

Source: Virals

Dead

“Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?"
Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg.
"Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child."
"He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked.”

Jim Butcher Captain's Fury

Source: Captain's Fury

Boy

“Those monkey-thumbs were meant for dogs. Give me my thumbs, you fu**ing monkeys!”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Dogs

“We are all just monkeys with money and guns.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Money

“I swear, sometimes it feels like there's this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials and changing channels on me. One minute I'm sitting around eating chocolate chip cookies and then all of a sudden I'm thinking about bears.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Feeling , Thinking , Change

“Hello," Magnus said to the monkey. The monkey did not reply. "I shall call you Ragnor.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Runaway Queen

“Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter.”

Buster Keaton (1895–1966) American actor and filmmaker

God , Silence

“As for monkeys, I would have five, and they would be named: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Do Pretty Much Whatever The Hell You Want, and Expensive Attorney.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Hell , Evil

“New York City vagrant:
"What sort of 'nese are you people? Are you Chinese, or Japanese, or Javanese?"

Kakuzo Okakura responds:
"We are Japanese gentleman. But what sort of 'key are you? Are you a Yankee, or a donkey, or a monkey?”

Kakuzo Okakura (1862–1913) Japanese scholar, author of The Book of Tea

People

“Right.” Sadie looked dazed. “You’ve got a monkey butler. Why not?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“Wait."
"So what am I supposed to do now?"

"You know, Jin, I would have saved myself from five hundred years' imprisonment beneath a mountain of rock had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey."

(222-223)”

Gene Luen Yang American Born Chinese

Source: American Born Chinese

Mountain , Waiting

“Everything in the universe is everything else. A man is a killer is a saint is a monkey is a cockroach is a goldfish is a whale, and the Devil is just the angel who asked for More.”

Craig Clevenger Dermaphoria

Source: Dermaphoria

Angels , Universe

“It was just a kiss – "
"Yeah, and King Kong was just a monkey.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: After the Night

Kiss

“Life could not be entirely devoted to debauchery and monkeys. Magnus had to finance all the drinking somehow.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Life , Drink

“Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

For Mother , Cats , Animals

“Picture this," said Magnus. "Me with a little monkey friend. I could teach him tricks. I could dress him in a cunning jacket. He could look just like me! But more monkey-shaped.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

“It's love this and love that but of couse it's so easy to love someone you don't know, whether it's George Clooney or Monkey. Staying civil to someone with whom you've ever shared Christmas turkey- now there's a miracle.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

Love , Christmas

“How was your day?" Morelli asked me. "Oh, you know, the usual. Stole a truck. Blew up a building, and brought seven monkeys home with me.”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Home

“Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Death , Singing

“Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1983), Ch. XXI, p. 214

Sex

“I didn't want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that's the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

World , Science , Baby

“I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' -- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Don't stop doing what you love.
Don't let your future be ruined by a bunch of loony sand monkeys.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Second Helpings

Love , Future

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“My voice speaking is a monkey's mouth making little mouth noises that are carrying agree-upon meaning, and it is meaning that matters. Without the meaning one has only little mouth noises”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Source: The Archaic Revival

“An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Men

“A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.”

Eoin Colfer book Airman

Source: Airman

“So what if man's body evolved from the monkeys? Whether he came from monkeys or fish is unimportant. The important idea is that when the body became "human" enough, the first human soul slipped into it.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Soul , Idea , Fish

“Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script forthey've worked out.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

People , Feeling , Thinking

“Flying monkeys?" the Gasman called out a guess. "Like in the Wizard of Oz?"
It dawned on me then. "No," I said tersely "Worse.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Flying

“The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.”

Daniel H. Pink book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Source: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Joy

“The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into…

A monkey?

I think not.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Thinking , Tree

“We have outsmarted ourselves, like greedy monkeys, and now we are full of dread.”

Peter Matthiessen book The Snow Leopard

Source: The Snow Leopard

“I was the green monkey, the pariah. And I had no friends. Not just a few friends, or one good friend, or grudging acceptance by other misfits and outcasts. I was alone. All stinking alone, without even an imaginary playmate.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

“Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Pain

“My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

Source: The Maltese Falcon

Way , Learning

“Moreover, I wish to assure you both that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Giulana and Magnus Bane in 1791, p. 13.
Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Context: "But of course you should have retreated at once from the dominant male. Are you an idiot? You are extremely lucky he was distracted from ripping out your throat by the fruit. He thought you were trying to steal his females."
"Pardon me, but we did not have the time to exchange that kind of personal information. I could not have known! Moreover, I wish to assure both of you that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys. [... ] I didn't actually see any, so I didn't get the chance."

“It's so quiet this high up, the feeling you get is that you're one of those space monkeys. You do the little job you're trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don't understand any of it, and then you just die.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Feeling , Understanding , Training

“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“No!" Leo yelled.
"Uhhh," Nico groaned from the floor.
"Piper!" Jason cried.
"Monkey!" Frank yelled.
"Not monkeys," Hazel grumbled. "I think those are dwarfs."
"Stealing my stuff!" Leo yelled, and ran for the stairs.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Thinking

“Bucky: "So I was watching TV today, and there was the most stupidest show on."
Rob: "You don't say. Offended you, did it?"
Bucky: "Yes… Yes. 'Offended.' That's exactly what it did. It said we evolved from monkeys! Well, lemme tell ya something, Bucky Katt don't come from no monkey!"
Rob: "No. No you don't. Cats actually come from a tiny, less developed, rat-like creature."
Bucky: "Wha… Hu… Fe… Shu…"
Satchel: "Ohhhh-ho-ho! Burn! Look out! Cat on fire! Uncle monkey's lookin' pretty good now, eh, Ratboy? Ha Ha Ha!"”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Strip October 13, 2004
Daily strip circa 2000
Bucky Katt, Dialogue

Cats

“The ‘novel’ is a publishing convention that deforms the story. If more attention were given to form there would be fewer novels and better stories. There's no reason a publisher can’t put out a story that's a hundred or even seventy pages long. But a publisher will look at a story like that as defective novel, ineligible for shortlists. It should be in a collection. Or pumped full of air, turned into a novel… It's a pity. You see some good writers behaving like performing monkeys.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

“Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linux 2.6.25.10, 2008-07-15, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-07-16 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/706950,
2000s, 2008

People , Thinking

“Because I "needed" them for school I had previously extorted a chemistry set, a soldering iron a magnifining glass, a tape recorder, a fountain pen, a Stanley knife, a compass, a torch, a set of oil paints, a speedometer for my bike, some sea monkeys, an Electra set, a halliwell's, a subscription to weapons and warfare and a ticket to the opening night of the Hamilton film festival. I'm sure if I'd claimed I needed one for biology she'd have hooked me up with a prostitute.”

Tony Martin (comedian) (1964) New Zealand comedian and writer

a nest of occasionals (book).

School , Painting , Sea , Night

“At first you think, 'Gosh, monkeys, that's so kind of incredible … But you started to kind of feel a little bit, not competitive with the monkeys, but that they weren't really — they didn't really have your best interests at heart. They aren't these … They want to replace you. They're not that impressed with the opposable thumbs.”

Owen Wilson (1968) American actor and screenwriter

On working with monkeys, in an Artist on Artist interview on MySpace (26 October 2007) http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=20862626.

Feeling , Thinking , Heart

“But I didn't believe in the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from trees; I believed we came about through a random process, but were created by God.”

Sarah Palin book Going Rogue: An American Life

Going Rogue: An American Life (2009), p. 217 http://books.google.com/books?id=Wx00mzMRGH8C&pg=PA217&dq=%22But+I+didn't+believe+in+the+theory%22, quoted in Memoir Is Palin’s Payback to McCain Campaign, The New York Times, 2009-11-14 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/15book.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&ref=books,
2014

Love , God , Thinking , Fish

“It has taken us two million years to elevate politics from the level of a monkey squabble, to a level comprehensible to a six year old child.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: PsyberMagick (1995), p. 35

“A monkey could drive this train.”

Meg Whitman (1956) American business executive

Said about running eBay in its early days, quoted in the New York Times, " EBay Bids on a New Path to Growth http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/technology/07ebay.html", February 6, 2011

Training

“…Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d,
At best is only a monkey shav’d!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Princess Ida (1884)

“Cats and monkeys — monkeys and cats — all human life is there!”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Madonna of the Future http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2460/2460-h/2460-h.htm (1879)
The Atlantic Monthly, March 1873 http://books.google.com/books?id=T4cGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Cats+and+monkeys+monkeys+and+cats+all+human+life+is+there%22&pg=PA293#v=onepage

Life , Cats

“Were I, who to my Cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious Creatures Man,
A Spirit free, to choose for my own Share,
What sort of Flesh and Blood I pleas’d to wear,
I’d be a Dog, a Monkey, or a Bear,
Or any thing, but that vain Animal,
Who is so proud of being Rational.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

ll. 1-7.
A Satire Against Mankind (1679)

Dogs , Animals

“The buzzard told the monkey "You're chokin' me
Release your hold and I'll set you free"
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said
"Your story's touching but it sounds like a lie."”

Nat King Cole (1919–1965) American singer and jazz pianist

"Straighten Up And Fly Right" (1937) written with Irving Mills.

Lie , Dead

“Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were.”

Harry Harlow (1905–1981) American psychologist

on the parental behavior of monkeys whose social behaviors he had destroyed in their infancy.
as quoted in Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, by Deborah Blum, Perseus Publishing, 2002

Dreams , Evil

“I dreamed a place where I have come to dwell
Cold Mountain says it all
Monkeys scream, the valley fog is cold
My door blends with the color of the peaks
I gather leaves and thatch a hut among the pines
Dig a pond and lead a trickle from the brook
Long ago I left the world behind
Eating ferns I pass the years in peace”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World , Peace , Dreams , Color

“I don't have counsel, I have more idioms as: Don't come to monkey mother with green bananas.”

Patricia Conde (1979) Spanish actress

No soy de consejos, soy más de frases hechas como: A mamá mono no le vengas con bananas verdes.
blog oficial Patricia Conde

“After an inferior man has been taught a doctrine of superiority he will remain as inferior as he was before his lesson. He will merely assume himself to be superior, and attempt to employ his recently-learned tactics against his own kind, whom he will then consider his inferiors. With each inferior man enjoying what he considers his unique role, the entire bunch will be reduced to a pack of strutting, foppish, self-centered monkeys gamboling about on an island of ignorance. There they will play their games under the supervision of their keeper, who was and will always be a superior man.”

Anton LaVey book The Devil's Notebook

The Devil's Notebook (1992)

Game , Learning

“Outside Adelaide, Australia: "…they showed us some of the native aborigines at a wayside station in the great plain yesterday afternoon though they are the most revolting form of living creatures I've ever seen!! They are the lowest known form of human beings & are the nearest thing to monkeys I've ever seen"”

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (1894–1972) king of the United Kingdom and its dominions in 1936

11 July 1920
Around the World with the Prince of Wales

“Ghostwritten’s secret agenda is to offer up eight different answers to the question, "Why do things happen?" so it has the right to monkey about with time and history. number9dreams’s secret agenda is to offer eight different answers to the question, "In what space does the mind operate?"”

David Mitchell (1969) English novelist

Interview in Stop Smiling magazine (29 June 2007) http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=841

Secret , History , Question , Time

“Am I the only one who thinks that David Beckham should film a sex scene with Brad Pitt? I don't know who's in charge of casting in Hollywood, but get it done before one of them is past their prime. Can you imagine those two making love? If there is not a man in here who's junk doesn't even wiggle at the thought of it, and this has nothing to do with your homophobic beliefs. At that level, it's art, you monkey! You should feel privileged that you get to breathe the same air as those Greek gods!”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Love , God , Making love , Art

“Most of the more complex emotions are common to the higher animals and ourselves. Every one has seen how jealous a dog is of his master's affection, if lavished on any other creature; and I have observed the same fact with monkeys. This shews that animals not only love, but have the desire to be loved.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", pages 41-42 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=54&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Love , Dogs , Animals