28 Quotes by Robert Ardrey

For the soundest of evolutionary reasons man appears at his best when times are worst.

Not in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born. The home of our fathers was that African highland reaching north from the Cape to the Lakes of the Nile. Here we came about-slowly, ever so slowly-on a sky-swept savannah glowing with menace.

While we pursue the unattainable, we make impossible the realizable.

The dog barking at you from behind his master’s fence acts for a motive indistinguishable from that of his master when the fence was built.

If you watch lizards and lions copulating, then you will see that in 200 million years the male has not had a single new idea.

Why is man man? As long as we have had minds to think with, stars to ponder upon, dreams to disturb us, curiosity to inspire us, hours free for meditation, words to place our thoughts in order, the question like a restless ghost has prowled the cellars of our consciousness.

Far from the truth lay the antique assumption that man had fathered the weapon. The weapon, instead, had fathered man.

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.

A bird does not fly because it has wings; it has wings because it flies.