#monkey

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. ↗

— Robert Wilensky

#internet #monkeys #shakespeare #internet

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately. Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court. ↗

— Mark Twain

#cats #dogs #doves #foxes #geese

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

— Charles Darwin

#again #american #brandy #drunk #getting

It was hard enough to drive those heavy old cars back then under normal circumstances, but with a crazed monkey clawing you at the same time, it becomes nearly impossible! ↗

— Tim Flock

#becomes #cars #circumstances #crazed #drive

Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys from time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that. ↗

— Wangari Maathai

#because #been #came #cannot #curse

Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just for this. ↗

— Maureen Johnson

#humor #monkeys #family

In Kenya you've got the great birds and monkeys leaping through the trees overhead. It's a chance to remember what the world is really like. ↗

— Joanna Lumley

#chance #got #great #kenya #leaping

The puma is, with the exception of some monkeys, the most playful animal in existence. ↗

— William Henry Hudson

#exception #existence #monkeys #most #playful

But only part of him was listening. Another part, even if it hadn't read Chomsky or Jung or Sheldrake—who had time for dead guys anyway?— at least had a basic understanding of what those guys had gone on about. Quantum nonlocality, quantum consciousness—Desjardins had seen too many cases of mass coincidence to dismiss the idea that nine billion human minds could be imperceptibly interconnected somehow. He’d never really thought about it much, but on some level he’d believed in the Collective Unconscious for years. He just hadn’t realized that the fucking thing had a death wish. ↗

— Peter Watts

#hundredth-monkey #polygenesis #death

I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys. ↗

— Dick Dale

#give #give me #grew #had #helpless