Sunday, December 22, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Charles Darwin

« All quotes from this author
 

Man bears in his bodily structure clear traces of his descent from some lower form; but it may be urged that, as man differs so greatly in his mental power from all other animals, there must be some error in this conclusion. No doubt the difference in this respect is enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who uses no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections, with that of the most highly organised ape.
--
volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", page 34

 
Charles Darwin

» Charles Darwin - all quotes »



Tags: Charles Darwin Quotes, Authors starting by D


Similar quotes

 

How significant is the enormous heightening, under mescalin, of the perception of color! ... Man's highly developed color sense is a biological luxury—inestimably precious to him as an intellectual and spiritual being, but unnecessary to his survival as an animal. ... Mescalin raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind. It would seem that, for Mind at Large, the so-called secondary characters of things are primary.

 
Aldous Huxley
 

The methods of logical procedure are very different in ancient and modem logic, but behind all difference is the construction of a universally valid order of thought, neutral with respect to material content. Long before technological man and technological nature emerged as the objects of rational control and calculation, the mind was made susceptible to abstract generalization. Terms which could be organized into a coherent logical system, free from contradiction or with manageable contradiction, were separated from those which could not. Distinction was made between the universal, calculable, “objective” and the particular, incalculable, subjective dimension of thought.

 
Herbert Marcuse
 

So far as cerebral structure goes... it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain and that of a Lemur.

 
Thomas Henry Huxley
 

Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

 
Roger Bacon
 

About Maria Callas, I am honestly practically devoid of words. And that must be the case when one comes up against a phenomenon that one simply can't explain, but whom one appreciates. Indeed, as far as I'm concerned, I've been in love with her for years. She is, I think without any doubt at all, (and I don't mind what letters come to me tomorrow) the greatest theatrical, musical artist of our time.... She has an enormous feeling for music. She has an enormous feeling for words. She has an enormous feeling for the dramatic situation. She can convey all those things to an audience in a way that practically no other artist alive today can do.

 
Maria Callas
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact