“
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
“
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 (Airman)
“
He couldn’t save the world outright, but he could aid it by living a life of integrity and contentment. If enough people did the same, the hundredth monkey effect would reshape the world, and in this way, he would be saving the world within a collective effort. Till then, he’d dive deeper and deeper into the calming depths of the sea, safe from the storms on the surface. And when he found himself coming up for air to interact with an unbalanced person who was stuck in the methodical illusion of the game, it would be his wealth of knowledge instead of his wealth of coin that would allow him to act like a cruise liner upon the surface of the sea, too immense for waves to agitate.
”
”
Jasun Ether (The Beasts of Success)
“
Nothing in this world is difficult, but thinking makes it seem so. Where there is true will, there is always a way.
”
”
Wu Cheng'en (Monkey: A Journey to the West)
“
Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles. But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses.
”
”
Simon Sinek (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)
“
Don't stop doing what you love.
Don't let your future be ruined by a bunch of loony sand monkeys.
”
”
Megan McCafferty (Second Helpings (Jessica Darling, #2))
“
Luffy: "Shanks you arm!"
Shanks: "Its no big deal. Just one arm. I'm glad your safe
”
”
Eiichiro Oda
“
Nothing bothered me, not even the things that bothered me.
”
”
Patti Smith (Year of the Monkey)
“
Victor Vigny: A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.
Conor Broekhart: Which resembles a giant banana.
”
”
Eoin Colfer
“
Hero is he alone who vies with powers supreme!
”
”
Wu Cheng'en (Monkey: The Journey to the West)
“
LOOK AROUND. GAME DEAD, RIVERS BLACK, LAND CHOKED WITH WEED. SKIES BLEEDING, RED AS BLOOD. FOR WHAT?
YOUR KIND ARE BLIND. YOU SEE ONLY THE NOW. NEVER THE WILL BE.
BUT SOON YOU WILL. WHEN ALL IS GONE, WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY MONKEY-CHILDREN THAT YOU MURDER FOR A SCRAP OF LAND, A DROP OF CLEAN WATER, THEN YOU WILL SEE.
”
”
Jay Kristoff (Stormdancer (The Lotus Wars, #1))
“
Once you come to terms with why you don't eat cats, dogs, monkeys, and dolphins, you will begin to understand why I don't eat cows, pigs, chickens, and lambs.
”
”
Edward Sanchez
“
Pruned my subconscious. Discovered new shoots.
”
”
Sally Jo Martine
“
What Waringa tried hard to avoid was looking at the pictures of the walls and windows of the church. Many of the pictures showed Jesus in the arms of the virgin Mary or on the cross. But others depicted the devil, with two cow-like horns and a tail like a monkey's, raising one leg in a dance of evil, while his angels, armed with burning pitchforks, turned over human beings on a bonfire. The Virgin Mary, Jesus and God's angels were white, like European, but the devil and his angels were black.
”
”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Devil on the Cross)
“
Only a hundred years ago the idea that an order might arise without a personal Author appeared so nonsensical to you that it inspired seemingly absurd jokes, like the one about the pack of monkeys hammering away at typewriters until the Encyclopedia Britannica emerged. I recommend that you devote some of your free time to compiling an anthology of just such jokes, which amused your forebears as pure nonsense but now turn out to be parables of Nature.
”
”
Stanisław Lem (Imaginary Magnitude)
“
If you want to sing,
sing like today is your last.
If you want to dance,
dance like today is your last.
If you want to laugh,
laugh like today is your last.
If birds sing without worrying
about who is listening to them,
and monkeys dance without worrying
about who is watching them,
and hyenas laugh without worrying
about who is mocking them,
then you too must do what you do best
without worrying about who is ridiculing you.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
If life deals you prunes, make pastries! They are surprisingly delicious, but most won't even take the time to learn this.
”
”
Miriam L. Jacobs (My Name is Not Monkey Girl)
“
If monkey became a man, then a man can become a hero.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
I find it easier to claim that I am friends with a monkey rather than with a man.
”
”
Shahla Khan (Friends With Benefits: Rethinking Friendship, Dating & Violence)
“
A stretch of time when I was rewarded with so many mystic moments, a chunk of red chalk, a chestnut, a rusted piece of scrap metal, a nail, a flat stone shaped like an ancient tablet. Although suggesting little of the magnificent work I had seen, these objects helped inspire my newfound contentedness. I placed them with the same care as a police detective into a clean plastic bag. Evidence of an awareness of the relative value of insignificant things.
”
”
Patti Smith (Year of the Monkey)
“
After death, you go on a very long way, that is going up. As you go, little by little, your features change. Your nose and ears retract in the flesh of your face like the little legs of a shellfish. Your fingers retract in your palm, your hands rebsorb in your shoulders. The same, your feet retract to your hips and you don’t walk anymore, you just float along a red brick wall, on which you leave your shadow like a streched disk.
You are so round, that you become translucent and begin to see on all sides at once. While we are alive, we see through a postal box, but after death, we see around, with all our skin.
Floating and looking at the the brick wall closer and closer, we get to a round place. There, in the middle, there is a cell, for we are in a mother’s womb. We enter the cell, and as the stages of our birth take place, we can see through the eyes of all beings, of the flea, of the rabbit, of the cat, the dog, the monkey, the man.. and with a little bit of luck, we can see through the eyes of the wonderful beings that follow the human being.
A dead man is now looking at you through my eyes.
”
”
Mircea Cărtărescu
“
If birds sing without worrying about who is listening to them, and monkeys dance without worrying about who is watching them, and hyenas laugh without worrying about who is mocking them, then you too must do what you do best without worrying about who is ridiculing you.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Great people will always be mocked by those who feel smaller than them. However, a lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey. A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker.
”
”
Suzy Kassem
“
Cherry Loot told Sergeant Burke, “I’m gonna make the best of this fuck-a-monkey show. Don’t mean fuck to me if it’s illegal, unjustified, and sinful. Today we’re heroes, tomorrow we’re the Nazis. You never know. Nobody on this ball knows shit.” It was an attitude refreshing if not outright inspiring.
”
”
Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke)
“
Once I heard Dantly tell Welton that the Native Americans used to call that particular part of the morning “between the wolf and the dog” because the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can’t tell what’s what. Is that a wolf on that hill or a dog? A man or a monkey? A saint or the devil?
”
”
Adam Rapp (Under the Wolf, Under the Dog)
“
TEMPLE
When the mind is stuck in external things, it is like a monkey. When the mind is focussed within, it is like a monk.
”
”
Sirshree (365 HAPPY QUOTES – DAILY INSPIRATIONS FROM SIRSHREE)
“
The study showed that even when the wire mother was the one lactating, the monkeys vastly preferred to be with and have physical contact with the soft-cloth mother.
”
”
Tom Butler-Bowdon (50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books (50 Classics))
“
Pushed times make a monkey chew pepper.~ Creole proverb. (challenging times inspire unique actions)
”
”
Myra Jolivet
“
Our best answers in defense of Christianity have always been useless clanging symbols unless our lives have inspired the world to ask.
”
”
Rachel Held Evans (Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions)
“
May we discover our deepest inspiration and purpose for being here.
”
”
Ralph De La Rosa (The Monkey Is the Messenger: Meditation and What Your Busy Mind Is Trying to Tell You)
“
The Jumblies
I
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, 'You'll all be drowned!'
They called aloud, 'Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
II
They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
'O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
III
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, 'How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
IV
And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
'O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
V
They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
VI
And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, 'How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, 'If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,---
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
”
”
Edward Lear
“
In the 1950s, primate researcher Harry Harlow’s legendary experiments replacing the real mothers of baby monkeys with cloth ones proved the extent to which infants need loving physical attention in order to become healthy adults.
”
”
Tom Butler-Bowdon (50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books (50 Classics))
“
Though they could be affectionate to other monkeys, few were able to mate as adults, and those who did have offspring were not able to take care of them properly. Clearly, the lack of normal response from their fake mothers, and their isolation from other monkeys, had made them socially backward. They
”
”
Tom Butler-Bowdon (50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books (50 Classics))
“
In the 1950s, primate researcher Harry Harlow’s legendary experiments replacing the real mothers of baby monkeys with cloth ones proved the extent to which infants need loving physical attention in order to become healthy adults. Remarkably, this sort of touching went against the child-rearing views of the time.
”
”
Tom Butler-Bowdon (50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books (50 Classics))
“
The behaviorist view was that babies—monkey or human—loved their mothers for the milk that they provided, since this satisfied a primary need. But what Harlow had seen with the cloth pads made him wonder whether babies might love their mothers not for their milk only, but because they provided warmth and affection. Perhaps
”
”
Tom Butler-Bowdon (50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books (50 Classics))
“
Harlow observed that when his baby monkeys grew up, they had many things wrong with them. Instead of the normal range of responses, they swung between clinging attachment and destructive aggression, often tearing at their body or shredding bits of cloth or paper. Even as adults they had to cling to soft, furry things, and did not seem to know the difference between living and inanimate objects. Though
”
”
Tom Butler-Bowdon (50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books (50 Classics))
“
Jolly Marchers by Maisie Aletha Smikle
Dam Dam Didley Doe
Dee Daw Didley Doe
Dee Dam Doe
Fa So La Ti Doe
Animals in a row
Prancing as they go
Jiggling and Wiggling
Tails and head bobbing
Mice on drums
Elephants on flute
Zebras blare the trumpets
Squirrels blow trombones
Skunks get funky on clarinets
Bees on violins
Hogs on guitar
Parrots and crickets sing Aha Aha
Vultures cheer
Mosquitoes twirl
Wings clapping and flapping
Heads go up and down bobbing
Marching and skanking
Rocking and bobbing
Wiggling and singing
Dee Daw Didley Doe
This is not a circus
There are no clowns
There is not a palace
There are no crowns
On and on they go
Monkeys in tow
Tigers in bow
Onlookers stare and glow
Donkey takes the podium
As conductor of the band
Waving his marching wand
The band comes to a stand
Mule takes a stool
And sits in the cool
They have reached the bend
Where the march ends
The ants were nesting
So they missed the fest
Some got on tambourines
And insist they must join in
The ants jiggle and wiggle
Some play the fiddle
Dancing and singing
Didley Dam Didley Doe
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle
“
The essentialist notion of “bad blood” is one of several biological metaphors inspired by a fear of the revenge of the cradle. People anticipate that if they leave even a few of a defeated enemy alive, the remnants will multiply and cause trouble down the line. Human cognition often works by analogy, and the concept of an irksome collection of procreating beings repeatedly calls to mind the concept of vermin.105 Perpetrators of genocide the world over keep rediscovering the same metaphors to the point of cliché. Despised people are rats, snakes, maggots, lice, flies, parasites, cockroaches, or (in parts of the world where they are pests) monkeys, baboons, and dogs.106 “Kill the nits and you will have no lice,” wrote an English commander in Ireland in 1641, justifying an order to kill thousands of Irish Catholics.107 “A nit would make a louse,” recalled a Californian settler leader in 1856 before slaying 240 Yuki in revenge for their killing of a horse.108 “Nits make lice,” said Colonel John Chivington before the Sand Creek Massacre, which killed hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1864.109 Cankers, cancers, bacilli, and viruses are other insidious biological agents that lend themselves as figures of speech in the poetics of genocide. When it came to the Jews, Hitler mixed his metaphors, but they were always biological: Jews were viruses; Jews were bloodsucking parasites; Jews were a mongrel race; Jews had poisonous blood.110
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
“
Page 25:
…Maimonides was also an anti-Black racist. Towards the end of the [Guide to the Perplexed], in a crucial chapter (book III, chapter 51) he discusses how various sections of humanity can attain the supreme religious value, the true worship of God. Among those who are incapable of even approaching this are:
"Some of the Turks [i.e., the Mongol race] and the nomads in the North, and the Blacks and the nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey, because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey does."
Now, what does one do with such a passage in a most important and necessary work of Judaism? Face the truth and its consequences? God forbid! Admit (as so many Christian scholars, for example, have done in similar circumstances) that a very important Jewish authority held also rabid anti-Black views, and by this admission make an attempt at self-education in real humanity? Perish the thought. I can almost imagine Jewish scholars in the USA consulting among themselves, ‘What is to be done?’ – for the book had to be translated, due to the decline in the knowledge of Hebrew among American Jews. Whether by consultation or by individual inspiration, a happy ‘solution’ was found: in the popular American translation of the Guide by one Friedlander, first published as far back as 1925 and since then reprinted in many editions, including several in paperback, the Hebrew word Kushim, which means Blacks, was simply transliterated and appears as ‘Kushites’, a word which means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew, or to whom an obliging rabbi will not give an oral explanation. During all these years, not a word has been said to point out the initial deception or the social facts underlying its continuation – and this throughout the excitement of Martin Luther King’s campaigns, which were supported by so many rabbis, not to mention other Jewish figures, some of whom must have been aware of the anti-Black racist attitude which forms part of their Jewish heritage.
Surely one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther King’s rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who supported him for tactical reasons of ‘Jewish interest’ (wishing to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel’s policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an anti-racist struggle – and back – and back again.
”
”
Israel Shahak (Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years)
“
In the early 1680s, at just about the time that Edmond Halley and his friends Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke were settling down in a London coffee house and embarking on the casual wager that would result eventually in Isaac Newton’s Principia, Hemy Cavendish’s weighing of the Earth, and many of the other inspired and commendable undertakings that
have occupied us for much of the past four hundred pages, a rather less desirable milestone was being passed on the island of Mauritius, far out in the Indian Ocean some eight hundred miles off the east coast of Madagascar.
There, some forgotten sailor or sailor’s pet was harrying to death the last of the dodos, the famously flightless bird whose dim but trusting nature and lack of leggy zip made it a rather irresistible target for bored young tars on shore leave. Millions of years of peaceful isolation had not prepared it for the erratic and deeply unnerving behavior of human beings.
We don’t know precisely the circumstances, or even year, attending the last moments of the last dodo, so we don’t know which arrived first a
world that contained a Principia or one that had no dodos, but we do know that they happened at more or less the same time. You would be
hard pressed, I would submit to find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate the divine and felonious nature of the human being-a species of organism that is capable of unpicking the deepest secrets of the heavens while at the same time pounding into extinction, for no purpose at all, a creature that never did us any harm and wasn’t even remotely capable of
understanding what we were doing to it as we did it. Indeed, dodos were so spectacularly short on insight it is reported, that if you wished to find
all the dodos in a vicinity you had only to catch one and set it to squawking, and all the others would waddle along to see what was up.
The indignities to the poor dodo didn’t end quite there. In 1755, some seventy years after the last dodo’s death, the director of the Ashmolean
Museum in Oxford decided that the institution’s stuffed dodo was becoming unpleasantly musty and ordered it tossed on a bonfire. This was a surprising decision as it was by this time the only dodo in existence, stuffed or otherwise. A passing employee, aghast tried to rescue the bird but could save only its head and part of one limb.
As a result of this and other departures from common sense, we are not now entirely sure what a living dodo was like. We possess much less information than most people suppose-a handful of crude descriptions by "unscientific voyagers, three or four oil paintings, and a few scattered osseous fragments," in the somewhat aggrieved words of the nineteenth century naturalist H. E. Strickland. As Strickland wistfully observed, we have more physical evidence of some ancient sea monsters and lumbering
saurapods than we do of a bird that lived into modern times and required nothing of us to survive except our absence.
So what is known of the dodo is this: it lived on Mauritius, was plump but not tasty, and was the biggest-ever member of the pigeon family,
though by quite what margin is unknown as its weight was never accurately recorded. Extrapolations from Strickland’s "osseous fragments" and the Ashmolean’s modest remains show that it was a little over two and a
half feet tall and about the same distance from beak tip to backside. Being flightless, it nested on the ground, leaving its eggs and chicks tragically easy prey for pigs, dogs, and monkeys brought to the island by outsiders. It was probably extinct by 1683 and was most certainly gone by 1693. Beyond that we know almost nothing except of course that we will not see its like again. We know nothing of its reproductive habits and diet, where it ranged, what sounds it made in tranquility or alarm. We don’t possess a single dodo egg.
From beginning to end our acquaintance with animate dodos lasted just seventy years.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
I heard a delightful—and possibly apocryphal—story about what happened when the British introduced golf to India in the 1820s. Upon building the first golf course there, the Royal Calcutta, the British discovered a problem: Indigenous monkeys were intrigued by the little white balls and would swoop down out of the trees and onto the fairways, picking them up and carrying them off. This was a disruption, to say the least. In response, officials tried erecting fences to keep the monkeys out, but the monkeys climbed right over. They tried capturing and relocating the monkeys, but the monkeys kept coming back. They tried loud noises to scare them away. Nothing worked. In the end, they arrived at a solution: They added a new rule to the game—“Play the ball where the monkey drops it.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
“
The monkey puzzle tree has absorbed your bad memories. It’s heard your words and read your thoughts. It will keep your memories, just like history is stored with words in a book. The monkey puzzle tree feeds off history good and bad, happy or sad. Trees are record keepers and this particular tree has more records than any other living tree. If trees disappeared, there will be no records to tell that we even existed. There will be no present, no past and therefore no future,” explained Petucan.
”
”
Jacqueline Edgington (Happy Jack)
“
What were you before you were a monkey?” asked Jack.
With a smile, Petucan answered, “First I was a thought. Then I became words in a book. Now, I’m part of a story in a dream or maybe I’m a dream in a story. But to you, I’m a stuffed monkey and now I’m your friend. We all have lots of labels. But the secret is, we can be anything we want to be. You can be alone, Jack, but you don’t have to be lonely.
”
”
Jacqueline Edgington (Happy Jack)
“
Never shame your client,” Billy Corrigan admonished Duncan long ago, when he had been employed as a junior draftsman only a few weeks, after his first disastrous meeting with Meg and Hank Waxman. “Always make the client feel smart and creative. Let the client think he is a design partner whose ideas fascinate and inspire you.
”
”
Katharine Weber (Still Life with Monkey)
“
Why seek help when you can become the help! Why wish for miracle when you can become the miracle! You are a God O brave-heart – never forget that. Have faith – not in an imaginary monkey up there – but in the powers vested in you by Mother Nature.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (7 Billion Gods: Humans Above All)
“
You cannot attempt to suggest much less try to explain this to normal people inside the box and is why I always throw in the monkey wrench option of doing it the social way
”
”
James D. Wilson
“
Off and on, for several years, I’d been reading Zen, I’d flirted with Tantric Hinduism, I’d surfed the smaller swells of Sufism, and tried to get down with the Tao. It was all very eye-opening and inspirational, and while Asian mysticism is an easy target for the sneers of secular cynics and sectarian dogmatists alike, it’s far more compatible with modern science than the misinterpreted Levantine myths, ecclesiastical fairy tales, pious platitudes, and near-desperate wishful thinking I’d been fed in Southern Baptist Sunday School. The wisdom in those spiritual texts was obvious, yet I’d integrated it into my daily life with but minimal success. From a practical point of view, it was like trying to teach a monkey to play chess.
”
”
Tom Robbins (Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life)
“
Page 25:
…Maimonides was also an anti-Black racist. Towards the end of the [Guide to the Perplexed], in a crucial chapter (book III, chapter 51) he discusses how various sections of humanity can attain the supreme religious value, the true worship of God. Among those who are incapable of even approaching this are:
Some of the Turks [i.e., the Mongol race] and the nomads in the North, and the Blacks and the nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey, because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey does.
Now, what does one do with such a passage in a most important and necessary work of Judaism? Face the truth and its consequences? God forbid! Admit (as so many Christian scholars, for example, have done in similar circumstances) that a very important Jewish authority held also rabid anti-Black views, and by this admission make an attempt at self-education in real humanity? Perish the thought. I can almost imagine Jewish scholars in the USA consulting among themselves, ‘What is to be done?’ – for the book had to be translated, due to the decline in the knowledge of Hebrew among American Jews. Whether by consultation or by individual inspiration, a happy ‘solution’ was found: in the popular American translation of the Guide by one Friedlander, first published as far back as 1925 and since then reprinted in many editions, including several in paperback, the Hebrew word Kushim, which means Blacks, was simply transliterated and appears as ‘Kushites’, a word which means nothing to those who have no knowledge of Hebrew, or to whom an obliging rabbi will not give an oral explanation. During all these years, not a word has been said to point out the initial deception or the social facts underlying its continuation – and this throughout the excitement of Martin Luther King’s campaigns, which were supported by so many rabbis, not to mention other Jewish figures, some of whom must have been aware of the anti-Black racist attitude which forms part of their Jewish heritage.
Surely one is driven to the hypothesis that quite a few of Martin Luther King’s rabbinical supporters were either anti-Black racists who supported him for tactical reasons of ‘Jewish interest’ (wishing to win Black support for American Jewry and for Israel’s policies) or were accomplished hypocrites, to the point of schizophrenia, capable of passing very rapidly from a hidden enjoyment of rabid racism to a proclaimed attachment to an anti-racist struggle – and back – and back again.
”
”
Israel Shahak (Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years)
“
For months I had been fighting off these very words, even going so far as to board a plane to South America to outrun them. Yet they have followed me here. Trailing me all the way to the edges of Argentina and Brazil like a Pinkerton detective hot on a case. When I first speak them aloud, I stop walking, listening only to the soundtrack of the Iguazú jungle: the chitter of those birds, the “ooh-ahhs” of those little capuchin monkeys, the pulse of those majestic waterfalls reverberating through the trees. An undeniable gauntlet has just been thrown down. I know before I fully understand it that my life will forever be changed from this moment on.
”
”
Nikki Vargas (Call You When I Land)
“
F ace the brutes That is a lesson for all life face the terrible face it boldly Like the monkeys the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them
”
”
Vivekananda (Inspiring Thoughts)
“
If you present a monkey with a diamond on one hand and a banana in the other, the
monkey will pick the banana every time, not knowing that the diamond can be traded
for a million bananas. So don't worry if you keep meeting people who can't see your
worth immediately. You just need to stop dealing with the monkeys and look for
people with more evolved minds.
”
”
Anubhav Srivastava (Inspirational Sayings: Get Super Motivated and Achieve Amazing Success through Inspirational Sayings!)
“
If you present a monkey with a diamond on one hand and a banana in the other, the monkey will pick the banana every time, not knowing that the diamond can be traded for a million bananas. So don't worry if you keep meeting people who can't see your worth immediately. You just need to stop dealing with the monkeys and look for people with more evolved minds.
”
”
Anubhav Srivastava (Inspirational Sayings: Get Super Motivated and Achieve Amazing Success through Inspirational Sayings!)
“
Of all the species on earth, we seem to be the only ones lacking an "enough" gene. In the wild, dogs, lions, cows, monkeys, apes, even mosquitoes and houseflies, eat until they are satisfied. They don't keep eating to obesity. Animals from squirrels to blue jays store food for winter-and some do store a little more than their needs. This might be seen as suboptimized evolution, as if they weren't evolved enough to remember where they'd hidden all their stores. However, the leftovers benefit other animals and move seeds to new growing sites. It's all part of a balanced ecosystem with zero waste.
”
”
Jay Harman (The Shark's Paintbrush: Biomimicry and How Nature is Inspiring Innovation)
“
Recipes of Sita People have to be fed during a war. And so the kitchens of Lanka were busy. Those who were going to the war had to be fed; those who were returning from the war had to be fed. Food had to inspire, comfort and stir passions. The smell of rice boiling, vegetables frying and fish roasting filled the city streets, mingling with the smell of blood, rotting flesh and burning towers. The aromas reached Sita’s grove. ‘Don’t you like that smell?’ asked Trijata noticing Sita’s expression as she inhaled the vapours. Trijata, Vibhishana’s daughter, had become a friend. ‘If I was cooking, I would change the proportion of the spices,’ Sita said. She gave her suggestions to Trijata, who promptly conveyed them to the royal kitchen. Mandodari followed these instructions and soon a different aroma wafted out of the kitchen. So enticing was the resulting aroma that other rakshasa cooks came to the Ashoka grove and asked Sita for cooking tips. Without tasting the food, just by smelling what had been prepared, like a skilled cook, Sita gave her suggestions. ‘Add more salt.’ ‘Replace mustard with pepper.’ ‘Mix ginger with tamarind.’ ‘Less cloves, more coconut milk.’ These suggestions were promptly executed, and before long Lanka was full of the most delightful aromas and flavours, so delightful that sons and brothers and husbands and fathers wanted to stay back and relish more food. They wanted to burp, then sleep, then wake up and eat again. They wanted to chew areca nuts wrapped in betel leaves and enjoy the company of their wives on swings. No war, no fighting, just conversations over food. Ravana noticed the lethargy in his men, their reluctance to fight. They were not afraid. They were not drunk. They were just too happy to go to war. Furious, he ordered the kitchens to be closed. ‘Starve the soldiers. Hungry men are angry men. In anger they will kill the monkeys. The only food they can eat is monkey flesh.
”
”
Devdutt Pattanaik (Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana)
“
Perhaps being a Christian isn’t about experiencing the kingdom of heaven someday but about experiencing the kingdom of heaven every day.
”
”
Rachel Held Evans (Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions)
“
Whilst Man, however well-behaved, At best is but a monkey shaved!” ― Charles Darwin “Discharge
”
”
Daniel Hemsworth (Inspirational Quotes from the Greatest Minds in Human History (Part 2): Plato, Galileo Galilei, Aristotle, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles Darwin)
“
Today religious nuts outnumber monkey nuts in the world.
”
”
Fakeer Ishavardas
“
Here’s the trick to significantly improving your SaaS email marketing skills—you have to become a student of it. This means you should: Start collecting great email copy, CTAs, and designs. Understand the objective behind each and every email that businesses send. Try to understand the rationale behind copy, link, and design decisions. There are great websites like Really Good Emails11, Good Email Copy12, and Good Sales Emails.com13 that you can use for your research. These sites categorize email copy and designs by types. As well as this, you should sign up to receive emails from some of the leading SaaS brands. Those include, among others: Drift MailChimp Pipedrive Shopify SurveyMonkey Trello Wistia Zapier You should also sign up to competing products and mailing lists from companies in your sector. I personally signed up to thousands of products and newsletters. It’s great for benchmarking and research. At the time of writing, I’ve already passively collected more than 60,000 emails. Obviously, don’t sign up to your competitors’ products with a business email address! I have a special email address I use for this. This account allows me to get data, understand what other organizations are doing, and find good copy ideas. For example, here’s what a search for ‘Typeform’ gives me: Figure 18.1 – Inbox Inspiration It’s not uncommon for me to sign up several times to the same product or newsletter. This allows me to see what they have learned and to track the evolution of their email marketing program. At LANDR, we created a shared document to keep track of subject lines, offers, and copy we wanted to test. Our copywriter was even going through his junk mail folder to find ideas and inspiration. There are tests we ran that were inspired by copy found in his spam folder. Some of them turned out to be really successful too—so keep your eyes open for inspiration. You can use Evernote, Paper, or any other platform to collaborate on idea generation. Alternatively, you can subscribe to paid services like Mailcharts14 or Mailody15. These services will help you track and understand your competitors’ email programs. Build processes to find and access copy and design ideas. It will help you create better emails, faster. In the next chapter we’ll get started creating our first email sequences.
”
”
Étienne Garbugli (The SaaS Email Marketing Playbook: Convert Leads, Increase Customer Retention, and Close More Recurring Revenue With Email)
“
The Rooster taught me to wake up early and be a leader.
The Butterfly encouraged me to allow a period of struggles to develop strong and look beautiful.
The Squirrel showed me to be alert and fast all the time.
The Dog influenced me to give up my life for my best friend.
The Cat told me to exercise every day. Otherwise, I will be lazy and crazy.
The Fox illustrated me to be subtle and keep my place organized and neat.
The Snake demonstrated to me to hold my peace even if I am capable of attack, harm, or kill.
The Monkey stimulated me to be vocal and communicate.
The Tiger cultivated me to be active and fast.
The Lion cultured me not to be lazy especially if I have strength and power that could be used.
The Eagle was my sample for patience, beauty, courage, bravery, honor, pride, grace, and determination.
The Rat skilled me to find my way out no matter what or how long it takes.
The Chameleon revealed to me the ability to change my color for beauty and protection.
The Fish display to live in peace even if I have to live a short life.
The Delphin enhanced me to be the source of kindness, peace, harmony, and protection.
The Shark enthused me to live as active and restful as I can be.
The Octopus exhibited me to be silent and intelligent.
The Elephant experienced me with the value of cooperation and family. To care for others and respect elders.
The Pig indicated to me to act smart, clean, and shameless.
The Panda appears to me as life is full of white and black times but my thick fur will enable me to survive.
The Kangaroo enthused me to live with pride even if I am unable to walk backward.
The Penguin influenced me to never underestimate a person.
The Deer reveals the ability to sense the presence of hunters before they sense you.
The Turtle brightened me to realize that I will get there no matter how long it takes me while having a shell of protection above me.
The Rabbit reassured me to allow myself to be playful and silly.
The Bat proved to me that I can fly even in darkness.
The Alligator/crocodile alerted me that threat exists.
The Ant moved me to be organized, active, and social with others.
The Bee educated me to be the source of honey and cure for others.
The Horse my best intelligent friend with who I bond. Trained me to recover fast from tough conditions.
The Whale prompted me to take care of my young ones and show them life abilities.
The Crab/Lobster enlightened me not to follow them when they make resolutions depending on previous undesirable events.
”
”
Isaac Nash (The Herok)
“
New wisdom is the wisdom that whispers to us to pursue detachment. It is the wisdom that, steady as breath work, releases us from our monkey-mind grip on exactly how life needs to look and sound. We don’t even have to obsess about how long an idea will be relevant, trusting the universe that when the idea’s time has expired an even more useful one will appear to replace it.
”
”
Anaik Alcasas (Sending Signals: Amplify the Reach, Resonance and Results of Your Ideas)
“
WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR PAST
Serve it with lemons and curdled milk
with shortbread biscuits
make the day gray
spots of rain.
Make a quilt out of the villains
crochet the heroes together in a hat
Wear the hat. Use the quilt
as a picnic blanket.
Bring your friends.
Watch the squirrels be tiny monkeys
dare-deviling the trees.
Exclaim things!
Each lemon, sup of tea, cookie
is a bite into the future /
will digest, exit, and swim.
Digest. Exit. Swim.
Drink the curdled milk and get sick
watch your friends clean up
hold your hair back / hat on
hand you a tissue.
When you wash the vomit
out of the villainous quilt
each time it gets weaker
Picnic often.
”
”
A.S. King (Switch)
“
The mind is like a restless monkey, but with practice and detachment, it can be tamed and made peaceful.
”
”
Twitter -@IntroIntrospect
“
True Love is not monkey love, it is not blind, and it does not expect anything in return. Love is flowing like a breeze on the beach and Love connects like a kiss or hug. Love simply is, by Gardener.
”
”
Jozef Simkovic (How to Kiss the Universe: An Inspirational Spiritual and Metaphysical Narrative about Human Origin, Essence and Destiny)
“
When you are bad at what you do,
people criticize you.
When you are average at what you do,
people criticize you.
When you are good at what you do,
people still criticize you.
Therefore, don’t waste your life trying to please anyone.
If birds sing without worrying about who is listening to them,
and monkeys dance without worrying about who is watching them,
and hyenas laugh without worrying about who is mocking them,
then you too must do what you do best without worrying about who is ridiculing you.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
YOU DON'T CREATE LIONS BY INSPIRING MONKEYS. YOU CREATE DEPRESSED OBSESSIVE MONKEYS
Monkeys and humans are social animals unlike the lonely lions.
”
”
Vineet Raj Kapoor
“
Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles.
”
”
Simon Sinek (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)
“
If there is Garbage in your Mind, and it’s full of junk, it’s time to Tame your ‘Monkey Mind’, and make it into a Monk!
”
”
Air
“
The world was our playground.. When you fell off the monkey bars, I left the playground.
”
”
Kendall (myself)
“
There are over a million types of fish in the sea as there are flowers in all of the world's gardens. There are at least a million different types of rocks/minerals as there are species of birds or monkeys. To believe we are the only "intelligent beings" on this earth and beyond is ignorance. The possible configurations of lifeforms that could be created from a single atom are infinite. There are at least a billion people on this earth, and no two faces look the same. It is very arrogant to assume that we have seen all of God's miracles.
”
”
Suzy Kassem
“
You are a God O brave-heart – never forget that. Have faith – not in an imaginary monkey up there – but in the powers vested in you by Mother Nature.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (7 Billion Gods: Humans Above All)
“
People by Maisie Aletha Smikle
Annatto top
Rust top
Cotton top
Butter top
Night top
Tight curls
Loose curls
No curls
Tail length
Ear length
Lambs’ wool
Goat strands
Cotton ball
Fur ball
Spongy tall
Donkey eyes
Monkey eyes
Triangle nose
Square nose
Pear nose
Fat lip
Flat lip
Colorful tone
Colorless tone
People atone down to the bone
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle
“
Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.
”
”
George Saunders (Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness)
“
That’s why the first twenty years we eat, sleep and enjoy ourselves; the next forty, we slave in the sun to support our family; the next ten, we do monkey tricks entertaining the grandchildren; and, for the last ten, we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone who passes.
”
”
Ralph Barnett (Humorous Spiritual e-Soup: A Compilation of Inspirational Messages from the Internet)
“
In his 1961 story about the Sneetches, Dr. Seuss introduced us to two groups of Sneetches, one with stars on their bellies and the other with none. The ones without stars wanted desperately to get stars so they could feel like they fit in. They were willing to go to extreme lengths and pay larger and larger sums of money simply to feel like they were part of a group. But only Sylvester McMonkey McBean, the man whose machine puts "stars upon thars," profited from the Sneetches' desire to fit in.
”
”
Simon Sinek (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)
“
Utanga refugee camp was their home for four years. When Ilhan turned twelve, a Lutheran church sponsored her family to go to the United States. Ilhan arrived in Arlington, Virginia, in possession of two English phrases: “Hello” and “Shut up.” Her classmates yanked at her hijab, stuck chewing gum to it, and bombarded her with questions like, “Do you have hair? Do you have a pet monkey? Does it feel good to wear shoes for the first time?” Every day, the girl who had survived armed militias and a refugee camp was reminded that she was different. “This is the first time I realized the stigma that I carried as an immigrant and a refugee, and a Muslim person who was visibly Muslim, with a headscarf,” she told The New Yorker. “And that my blackness was a source of tension.” But as the kids bullied her, Ilhan remembered her grandfather telling her as a child: “Everything is temporary.” His words gave her courage.
”
”
Seema Yasmin (Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure)
“
Ron Gilbert, took inspiration from Sierra games like King’s Quest and Leisure Suit Larry but, more than just the game, what Maniac Mansion (and Ron) gave LucasArts was the underlying engine created for the game, SCUMM‡. This would form the backbone of future hits for the company such as Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Maniac Mansion sequel Day of the Tentacle, two Indiana Jones games (one based on The Last Crusade, the other an original adventure called The Fate of Atlantis), Sam & Max Hit the Road and, most famously, The Secret of Monkey Island. Humour permeates all these games successfully in a way it rarely has before or since. Monkey Island’s ‘insult’ sword-fight is perhaps the best-known example, but there are many more. The jokes even operate between games;
”
”
Steve McNeil (Hey! Listen!: A journey through the golden era of video games)
“
This monograph presents personalism that counters reductionist perspectives of behaviourism, neuroscience, and cybernetics. It delves into the mysteries of the psyche and mind: awareness, consciousness, selfhood, introspection, empathy, and communication. From a phenomenological angle, a person comprises psyche, mind, and self; ontologically, body and mind; existentially, a unique and formidable blend of the sacred, profane, spiritual, material, temporary, and eternal.
The psyche, with its awareness, relies on the brain. The mind, equipped with consciousness, reflects the occurrences within the psyche but operates independently of both. As a spiritual entity, the mind remains conscious even when the brain is split in two or rendered inactive in clinical death.
The mind is inborn; the psyche develops later. The mind makes intuitive decisions that the psyche subsequently rationalizes. An artist’s mind prepares creations before articulation, while scientists often formulate intuitive theories before documenting them. The mind detects emotions before the psyche can express them, reacting swiftly in dangerous situations, while the psyche takes time to catch up. Our mind intuitively grasps abstract, symbolic meanings not only in formal concepts but also in metaphors, stories, jokes, and rhetorical questions. In theatre, the human audience may laugh upon comprehension, whereas an AI robot or monkey remains indifferent. Our thoughts and feelings are visceral, a quality that remains inaccessible to robots.
Zbigniew Pleszewski, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal. Prior to his appointment at McGill, he was actively engaged in clinical practice, research, and teaching throughout Europe (Clinical Psychology Department at Poznań University, Psychosomatic Medicine Department at Hamburg University), Japan (as a visiting professor at the Psychosomatic Medicine Department at Kyushu University), and Canada (Psychology Department at Concordia University). His research interests centre on long-term emotional functioning preceding heart attacks, markers of immunocompetence in hemodialyzed patients with and without depressive traits, as well as psychotherapy and hypnotherapy. His areas of teaching encompass psychosomatic medicine, personality, motivation, and the philosophical foundations of psychology. He has worked as a clinical psychologist on the Crisis Team in the Emergency Room at the Douglas Institute, a psychiatric teaching hospital in Montreal, for several years. He has also travelled extensively throughout Europe, the Middle East, Egypt, Asia, Australia, South America, and North America.
”
”
Zbigniew Pleszewski (Person: Psyche, Mind, and Self)