Charles Darwin — "An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, a…"
An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Charles Darwin
"Great is the power of steady misrepresentation."
"I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade my…"
"To kill an error is as good a service as to establish a new truth."
"It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly."
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection."
About Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
British naturalist whose On the Origin of Species (1859) established evolution by natural selection — the unifying theory of modern biology. Closely associated with Thomas Henry Huxley (his 'bulldog' public defender) and Alfred Russel Wallace (independent co-discoverer of natural selection). For an intellectual contrast, see William Paley, Anglican theologian and Natural Theology author (1743-1805) — Origin of Species is structurally a 400-page reply to Paley — Darwin admired Paley's watchmaker-argument as an undergraduate at Cambridge and then spent 20 years building the empirical machinery to displace him. The cleanest 'design argument vs natural selection' founding rebuttal in science.
The standard scholarly entry points to Charles Darwin's work: Janet Browne (Harvard, history of science) — Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995) and The Power of Place (2002); Adrian Desmond (UCL, biographer) — Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (1991, with James Moore). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Charles Darwin.
Details
A humorous and somewhat cynical observation on human behavior versus animal learning.
Date: Approximate
WisdomVerification
Confirmed
Found in 2 providers: gemini,grok
2 sources checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Darwin uses a monkey's single bad experience with brandy to mock human behavior. The animal learns immediately — taste it once, avoid it forever. Humans, despite supposedly superior intelligence, keep returning to destructive habits. The quote is darkly comic: the primate demonstrates better applied reasoning than most people do. It challenges the flattering notion that human rationality automatically produces wiser choices than other animals make through simple instinct.
Relevance to Charles Darwin
Darwin spent decades observing animal behavior across continents, and his theory of evolution placed humans squarely within the animal kingdom. In 'The Descent of Man' (1871), he traced emotional and behavioral continuities between humans and other primates. This quote reflects his characteristic move: using animal observation to deflate human pride. His personal letters also reveal dry, self-deprecating humor — this barbed comparison is entirely consistent with his scientific and personal voice.
The era
Victorian Britain and 19th-century America both faced serious alcohol-related social crises — temperance movements were gaining force, highlighting how addiction destroyed working-class families. Simultaneously, Darwin's evolutionary ideas were upending the claim that humans occupy a uniquely rational tier above animals. This quote lands at that exact intersection: as temperance advocates struggled to explain why rational humans kept drinking, Darwin pointed at a monkey doing what humans could not manage.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].