What could not be denied was that in vast segments of the animal world natural selection of the most qualified individuals took place not by competition for females but by competition for space.

Animal language is a contagious expression of mood effecting communication between social partners.

The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.

We are born of risen apes, not fallen angels.

Natural selection deals ruthlessly with any population, bird or beaver, which fails to solve the problems of its environment with all those resources, learned or unlearned, which may be at its disposal.

Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance.

The city is a cultural invention enforcing on the citizen knowledge of his own nature. And this we do not like. That we are aggressive beings, easily given to violence; that we get along together because we must more than because we want to, and that the brotherhood of man is about as far from reality today as it was two thousand years ago; that reason's realm is small; that we never have been and never shall be created equal; that if the human being is perfectible, he has so far exhibited few symptoms - all are considerations of man from which space tends to protect us.