Daily Inspiration Quote by Cornelia Otis Skinner

Self-deprecation is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and that is Skinner's point. As an actress and writer who traded in urbane persona and comic timing, she turns Darwin into a mirror you do not exactly want to look into: the moments when you catch yourself acting petty, reactive, or just plain foolish, and you realize how thin the veneer of sophistication can be. The joke lands because it treats evolution not as a grand scientific narrative but as an embarrassingly personal audit.

Her phrasing is slyly theatrical. "Curious revelations" sounds like a drawing-room euphemism, the polite language of someone trying to maintain composure while confessing the opposite. "Validity of the Darwinian theory" is mock-formal, borrowing the tone of a lecture to describe a private lapse. Then comes the punchline: my "spring" from the ape was not very far. The wordplay does two things at once: it nods to the literal "sprung from" while hinting at a sudden, ungraceful leap backward into instinct.

The subtext is less anti-science than anti-self-myth. Skinner is poking at the modern desire to see ourselves as refined, rational, above the animal mess. In the early-to-mid 20th century, Darwin had already become cultural shorthand for both progress and insult; she exploits that double meaning. What makes it work is its honesty dressed up as wit: the laugh comes with the uncomfortable recognition that our most "civilized" selves are often only situationally civilized.