Desmond Morris > Quotes

“We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.”
― Desmond Morris

“I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.”
― Desmond Morris

“...In little more than a single century from 1820 to 19450, no less than fifty-nine million human animals were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another.... We describe these killings as men behaving "like animals," but if we could find a wild animal that showed signs of acting this way, it would be more precise to describe it as behaving like men.”
― Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

“We may prefer to think of ourselves as fallen angels, but in reality we are rising apes.”
― Desmond Morris

“Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.”
― Desmond Morris

“Frequently we imagine that we are behaving in a particular way because such behaviour accords with some abstract, lofty code of moral principles, when in reality all we are doing is obeying a deeply ingrained and long ‘forgotten’ set of purely imitative impressions.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“My writing, on the other hand, is always done with my readers in mind. I never write for my own amusement. I always try to put across an idea that I feel is important, in the most easily readable form I can manage. This has annoyed some of my academic colleagues, who feel that I am oversimplifying my subject, but I argue that at least my writings are widely read, while theirs stay firmly within the confines of their academic ivory towers. And I always work with one special rule in mind: simplification without distortion. This is, in fact, much harder than the usual self-indulgent academic writing.”
― Desmond Morris

“A belief in the validity of the acquisition of knowledge and a scientific understanding of the world we live in, the creation and appreciation of aesthetic phenomena in all their many forms, and the broadening and deepening of our range of experiences in day-to-day living, is rapidly becoming the 'religion' of our time.”
― Desmond Morris

“The news that is brought to us is nearly always bad news, but for every act of violence or destruction that occurs there are a million acts of peaceful friendliness.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“...of eighteen kittens reared in the company of rodents, only three became rodent-killers later on. The other fifteen could not be trained to kill later by seeing other cats killing. For them the rodents had become 'family' and were no longer 'prey'. Even the three killers would not attack rodents of the same species as the one with which they were reared.”
― Desmond Morris, Catwatching: The Essential Guide To Cat Behaviour

“In an earlier chapter I mentioned recent research which has shown that the preference for sweet and fruity odours falls off dramatically at puberty, when there is a shift in favour of flowery, oily and musky odours. The juvenile weakness for sweetness can be easily exploited, and frequently is.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“The only reason why we are always having the doctrine of original sin instilled into us, in one form or another, is that the artificial conditions of the super-tribe keep on working against our biological altruism, and it needs all the help it can get.”
― Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

“The word ‘love’ is, in fact, the way we commonly describe the emotional feelings that accompany the imprinting process.”
― Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

“The establishment’s reply is that dissenting students are bent, not on positive innovation, but on negative disruption. Against this, however, it can be argued that these two processes are very closely related and that the former only degenerates into the latter when it finds itself blocked.”
― Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

“So far, so good, but what about the man who rushes headlong into the fire to save a complete stranger? The stranger is probably not genetically related to the man who helps him, so this act must surely be truly unselfish and altruistic? The answer is Yes, but only by accident. The accident is caused by the rapid growth of human populations in the last few thousand years. Previously, for millions of years, man was tribal and any inborn urge to help his fellow-men would have meant automatically that he was helping gene-sharing relatives, even if only remote ones. There was no need for this urge to be selective, because there were no strangers around to create problems. But with the urban explosion, man rapidly found himself in huge communities, surrounded by strangers, and with no time for his genetic constitution to alter to fit the startlingly new circumstances. So his altruism inevitably spread to include all his new fellow-citizens, even though many of them may have been genetically quite unrelated to him. Politicians, exploiting this ancient urge, were easily able to spread the aid-system even further, to a national level called patriotism, so that men would go and die for their country as if it were their ancient tribe or their family.”
― Desmond Morris, Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

“As a species we are a predominantly intelligent and exploratory animal, and beliefs harnessed to this fact will be the most beneficial for us. A belief in the validity of the acquisition of knowledge and a scientific understanding of the world we live in, the creation and appreciation of aesthetic phenomena in all their many forms, and the broadening and deepening of our range of experiences in day-to-day living, is rapidly becoming the 'religion' of our time. Experience and understanding are our rather abstract god-figures, and ignorance and stupidity will make them angry. Our schools and universities are our religious training centres, our libraries, museums, art galleries, theatres, concert halls and sports arenas are our places of communal worship. At home we worship with our books. newspapers. magazines, radios and television sets. In a sense, we still believe in an after-life, because part of the reward obtained from our creative works is the feeling that, through them, we will 'live on' after we are dead. Like all religions, this one has its dangers, but if we have to have one, and it seems that we do, then it certainly appears to be the one most suitable for the unique biological qualities of our species. Its adoption by an ever-growing majority of the world population can serve as a compensating and reassuring source of optimism to set against the pessimism (...) concerning our immediate future as a surviving species.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“ALL ANIMALS PERFORM actions and most do little else. A great many also make artefacts”
― Desmond Morris, Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

“Today each nation flies its own flag, a symbolic embodiment of its territorial status. But patriotism is not enough. The ancient tribal hunter lurking inside each citizen finds himself unsatisfied by membership of such a vast conglomeration of individuals, most of whom are totally unknown to him personally. He does his best to feel that he shares a common territorial defence with them all, but the scale of the operation has become inhuman. It is hard to feel a sense of belonging with a tribe of fifty million or more. His answer is to form sub-groups, nearer to his ancient pattern, smaller and more personally known to him - the local club, the teenage gang, the union, the specialist society, the sports association, the political party, the college fraternity, the social clique, the protest group, and the rest. Rare indeed is the individual who does not belong to at least one of these splinter groups, and take from it a sense of tribal allegiance and brotherhood. Typical of all these groups is the development of Territorial Signals - badges, costumes, headquarters, banners, slogans, and all the other displays of group identity. This is where the action is, in terms of tribal territorialism, and only when a major war breaks out does the emphasis shift upwards to the higher group level of the nation.”
― Desmond Morris, Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

“We like to think of this as the conquest of bestial weaknesses by the powers of intellectual altruism, as if ethics and morality were some kind of modern invention. If this were really true, it is doubtful if we would be here today to proclaim it. If we did not carry in us the basic biological urge to co-operate with our fellow men, we would never have survived as a species.”
― Desmond Morris

“Ironically, the inborn factor that is most likely to be making the major contribution to the savageries of modern war is the powerful human inclination to co-operate. This is a legacy from our ancient hunting past, when we had to co-operate or starve. It was the only way we could hope to defeat large prey animals. All that a modern dictator has to do is to play on this inherent sense of human group-loyalty and to expand and organize this group into a full-scale army. By converting the naturally helpful into the excessively patriotic, he can easily persuade them to kill strangers, not as acts of inborn brutality, but as laudable acts of companion-protection. If our ancestors had not become so innately co-operative, it might be much more difficult today to raise an army and send it into battle as an organized force.”
― Desmond Morris, Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

“This is one of the prices that the biological tribesman must pay for becoming an artificial super-tribesman. The only solution is to find a brilliant, rational, balanced, deep-thinking brain housed in a glamorous, flamboyant, self-assertive, colourful personality. Contradictory? Yes. Impossible? Perhaps; but there is a glimmer of hope in the fact that the very size of the super-tribe, which causes the problem in the first place, also offers literally millions of potential candidates.”
― Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal

“As a species we may be technologically clever and philosophically brilliant, but we have not lost our animal property of being physically active;”
― Desmond Morris, Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

“كثيرا ما نجد أصحاب السيارات يعلقون تمائم جالبة للحظ او أشياء شخصية مثل ما يضع مدراء المكاتب صور او أغراض شخصية فهـم يفعلون ذلك لتمييز حدودهم الجغرافية الفردية”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“Hemos llegado al punto en que debemos dejar de sentirnos satisfechos, la solución es evidente: reducir el ritmo de la natalidad, sin poner obstáculos a la estructura social existente; evitar un aumento en cantidad, sin impedir un aumento en calidad.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“Detrás de la fachada de la ciudad moderna, sigue morando el viejo mono desnudo. Sólo los nombres han cambiado: en vez de caza, decimos "trabajo"; en vez de campo de caza, "barrio comercial", en vez de cubil, "hogar", en vez de apareamiento, "matrimonio"; en vez de compañera, "esposa", etcétera.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“...we are, despite all our great technological advances, still very much a simple biological phenomenon. Despite our grandiose ideas and our lofty self-conceits, we are still humble animals, subject to all the basic laws of animal behavior..."
- Desmond Morris from 'The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal

[...] nonostante i grandi progressi tecnologici, noi siamo ancora fondamentalmente un semplice fenomeno biologico e, malgrado le nostre idee grandiose e l'alto concetto che abbiamo di noi stessi, siamo ancora degli umili animali, soggetti a tutte le leggi fondamentali del comportamento animale.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“Por estudios realizados sobre otras especies en estado de superpoblación experimental, sabemos que llega un momento en el que el aumento de densidad de población alcanza un punto extremo en el que se destruye toda la estructura social.”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“A prima vista, è sorprendente che la religione abbia avuto tanto successo, ma la sua estrema potenza è semplicemente dovuta alla forza della nostra fondamentale tendenza biologica, ereditata direttamente dai nostri antenati scimmie e scimmioni, a sottometterci a un membro del gruppo onnipotente e dominatore."
da La Scimmia Nuda di Desmond Morris”
― Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape

“Por muy grandiosas que sean nuestras ideas y por muy orgullosos que nos sintamos de ellas, seguimos siendo humildes animales, sometidos a todas las leyes básicas del comportamiento animal. Mucho antes de que nuestra población alcance los niveles que se dejan apuntados, habremos quebrantado un número tan grande de las normas que rigen nuestra naturaleza biológica, que nos habremos derrumbado como especie dominante. Tendemos a dejarnos llevar a la extraña ilusión de que esto no ocurrirá jamás, de que hay en nosotros algo especial que nos sitúa por encima del control biológico. Pero no es así. Muchas especies interesantes se han extinguido en el pasado, y nosotros no constituimos la excepción. Más pronto o más tarde, nos iremos y dejaremos nuestro sitio a algo distinto. Si queremos que esto tarde en ocurrir, debemos estudiarnos a fondo como ejemplares biológicos, y darnos cuenta de nuestras limitaciones.”
― Desmond Morris, El mono desnudo