Prehensile Quotes (2 quotes)
Some filosifers think that a fakkilty’s granted
The minnit it’s felt to be thoroughly wanted.…
That the fears of a monkey whose holt chanced to fail
Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail.
The minnit it’s felt to be thoroughly wanted.…
That the fears of a monkey whose holt chanced to fail
Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail.
Satire, from 'Biglow Papers', as quoted in Horatio Hackett Newman (ed.), Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics (1921), 330.
We know that there are many animals on this continent not found in the Old World. These must have been carried from here to the ark, and then brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, armadillo, ant-eater, sloth, agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the raccoon and muskrat carried by the angels from America to Asia? How did they get there? Did the polar bear leave his field of ice and journey toward the tropics? How did he know where the ark was? Did the kangaroo swim or jump from Australia to Asia? Did the giraffe, hippopotamus, antelope and orang-outang journey from Africa in search of the ark? Can absurdities go farther than this?
In Some Mistakes of Moses (1879), 149.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 

