Animals Quotes

"Once I showed up at my sister's with a baby rabbit I had bought from some children because its ears were cold. I put the rabbit on a hot water bottle and massaged its ears for quite a while. After all, I knew that all healthy animals had warm ears"

Juliette G. Low

"The human young must learn to perceive these affordances, in some degree at least, but the young of some animals do not have time to learn the ones that are crucial for survival"

James J. Gibson, Psychologist

"The main point for me is moral; animals are sentient beings. I know for some this is a hard argument to accept, but we're not built to eat a lot of meat"

Grace Slick, Musician

"This growth in the number, speed of formation, permanence, delicacy and complexity of associations possible for an animal reaches its acme in the case of man"

Edward Thorndike, Psychologist

"Grissom comes from a place where we know he had a deaf mother, he was raised in a silent household, on some level, had a father who potentially was not around and he learned what he knew by himself in the back yard, with bugs and animals. He's not comfortable being a supervisor and that's his problem"

William Petersen, Actor

"It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them"

Alfred Russel Wallace, Scientist

"If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence"

Will Cuppy, Writer

"Man is a fire-stealing animal, and we can't help building machines and machine intelligences, even if, from time to time, we use them not only to outsmart ourselves but to bring us right up to the doorstep of Doom"

Richard Dooling, Novelist

"If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy"

Dustin Hoffman, Actor

"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground"

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender"

Henri Frederic Amiel, Philosopher

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions"

Mark Twain, Author

"The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated"

Mahatma Gandhi, Leader

"Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head"

Gilbert K. Chesterton, Writer

"Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails"

Plato, Philosopher

"As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other"

Pythagoras, Mathematician

"A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help"

Albert Schweitzer, Theologian

"Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth"

Ambrose Bierce, Journalist

"Wildlife trafficking is not just an animal welfare issue. It is a global security threat, an environmental threat, and a threat to our health and well-being"

Peter Knights, Activist

"We need to change our attitudes towards wildlife and recognize that these animals are not commodities to be bought and sold. They are living beings that deserve our respect and protection"

Peter Knights, Activist

"A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere"

Groucho Marx, Comedian

"Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it"

Adlai E. Stevenson, Politician

"The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society"

Karl Marx, Philosopher

"The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world"

Willa Cather, Author

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite"

Leo Tolstoy, Novelist

"Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs"

P. J. O'Rourke, Journalist

"Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure"

Samuel Johnson, Author

"The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men"

Bertrand Russell, Philosopher

"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this"

Bertrand Russell, Philosopher

"Being asked what animal you'd like to be is a trick question; you're already an animal"

Doug Coupland, Author

"Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it's not quite the same thing"

Doug Coupland, Author

"The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own"

W. H. Auden, Poet

"Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society"

Honore de Balzac, Novelist

"Man has done a lot to make himself dangerous and animals get the worst of all of it. But then, man too is an animal"

Don Van Vliet, Artist

"I have no neighbours other than animals and Joshua Trees"

Don Van Vliet, Artist

"I don't look like a desert person because I stay indoors most of the day and fool around at night. That's what the desert animals do - they don't have a tan either"

Don Van Vliet, Artist

"Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him"

H.G. Wells, Author

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