Time & Perspective Quote by Desmond Morris

Morris needles the human animal with a scientist's deadpan scalpel: we are "highly successful" not because we're especially honest about ourselves, but because we're exceptionally good at telling flattering stories about our behavior. The line lands because it twists a compliment into an indictment. "Unusual" and "successful" sound like a trophy until you notice the price of admission: constant self-justification.

The key move is the symmetry. We devote "a great deal of time" to scrutinizing "higher motives" - morality, purpose, virtue, identity - and "an equal amount" to ignoring the "fundamental ones" - hunger, status-seeking, sexual competition, territoriality, fear. Morris isn't arguing that higher motives are fake; he's arguing they're often retrospective varnish. The subtext is Darwinian: the stories come after the impulses, and the stories exist to keep us socially legible. We perform nobility to ourselves the way we perform it to others, because reputation is a survival tool.

As a behavioral scientist working in the wake of ethology and popularized evolutionary thinking (The Naked Ape era), Morris is also taking aim at a particular modern vanity: the idea that self-awareness equals self-mastery. Humans treat introspection like a moral upgrade, yet much of it is theatre - a sophisticated distraction from the blunt machinery underneath. The quote's intent isn't to humiliate; it's to reframe. If you want to understand people, start with what they're motivated to deny.