It’s perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest ‚weaknesses‘; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code – with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It’s very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

There is no body of theory or significant body of relevant information, beyond the comprehension of the layman, which makes policy immune from criticism.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

I’m crepuscular.

I’m a genetic optimist.

Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it’s a green light.

Everyone knows nowadays that people ‚have complexes‘. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

It must be the Brit in me, because I like animals.

I’ve written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

The difference between humans and other mammals is that we know how to accessorize.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.

Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon’s unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.

We all have limitations. I don’t have the right genes to be an Olympic weightlifter. I don’t have the right genetics to be an Olympic sprinter. Or gymnast. Sure, if I trained my whole life, perhaps I could have become fairly decent in those sports.

With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognised worldwide.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

You’re not a product of your nature. That is your genetic makeup or your nurture, the things that have happened to you. Of course those things affect you powerfully, but they do not determine you.

The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.

Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

There were plenty of other hominids, but they disappeared, probably because humans exterminated them, but nobody knows for sure.

Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

I got my love of animals from the Dr. Doolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels. I remember my mum taking me to the first Tarzan film, which starred Johnny Weissmuller, and bursting into tears. It wasn’t what I had imagined at all.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

I’ve seen a look in dogs‘ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

I was brought up to understand Darwin’s theory of evolution. I spent hours and hours in the Natural History Museum in London looking at the descriptions of how different kinds of animals had evolved, looking at the sequence of fossil bones looking gradually more and more and more and more like the modern fossil.

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

As social animals we humans are very sensitive to our rank and position within any group. We can measure our status by the attention and respect we receive.

Living animals are too eccentric in their movements, and the law of gravitation usually draws me from my seat upon them to a lower level; therefore, I am not an inveterate lover of horseback.

God looks after children, animals and idiots.

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.