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Humans are chimpanzees reciting Shakespeare – dunces with the technology of geniuses.

— Steve Stewart-Williams The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

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Intelligence

More quotes by Steve Stewart-Williams

Rather than the human brain evolving for God, God evolved for the human brain.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

We’re clusters of chemical reactions that contemplate deep truths about the nature of reality.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

Nature isn’t just a bloodbath; it’s also a vast, unending orgy.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

There are no average sex differences in IQ, for instance (much to the surprise and disappointment of both sexes).

A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)

When you contemplate the universe, part of the universe becomes conscious of itself.

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Steve Stewart-Williams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.