Bird Quotes

"The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air"

Wilbur Wright, Inventor

"I'd like to think that the nature of the two teams - Boston being a championship team over the years and the Lakers, same thing - was a lot bigger than Larry Bird or Magic Johnson"

Oscar Robertson, Athlete

"In Kenya you've got the great birds and monkeys leaping through the trees overhead. It's a chance to remember what the world is really like"

Joanna Lumley, Actress

"Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about"

Saskya Pandita, Leader

"To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds"

Gore Vidal, Novelist

"The United States is a big country but unfortunately it seems it has the brain of a little bird not befitting the greatness of the country"

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Politician

"I gave away two dogs years ago because I felt guilty at not being able to give them the time and attention they deserved. I now regularly feed an army of squirrels and wild birds around our house"

Mike Farrell, Actor

"There's an unseen force which lets birds know when you've just washed your car"

Denis Norden, Writer

"Use those talents you have. You will make it. You will give joy to the world. Take this tip from nature: The woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except those who sang best"

Bernard Meltzer, Lawyer

"Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent"

Sharon Tate, Actress

"I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none"

Olivier Messiaen, Composer

"Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them?"

Rose Kennedy, Author

"A clock struck out the hour of twelve, and the bird in the hedgerow was still singing as we marched out to the roadway, and followed our merry pipers home to town"

Patrick MacGill, Journalist

"Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them"

Martin Henry Fischer

"Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works"

Alma Gluck, Musician

"When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck"

James Whitcomb Riley, Poet

"If worms carried pistols, birds wouldn't eat 'em"

Darrell Royal, Coach

"I've known since I went to the national team when I was very young that I was a different bird"

Tiffeny Milbrett, Athlete

"Since childhood she had walked the Devon rivers with her father looking for flowers and the nests of birds, passing some rocks and trees as old friends, seeing a Spirit everywhere, gentle in thought to all her eyes beheld"

Henry Williamson, Author

"Having done something like The Thorn Birds gives you enormous longevity. You can keep picking and choosing the roles for a bit longer"

Rachel Ward, Actress

"These things don't just come, arrive and settle like a bird picking up a few bits of crumbs. They develop. I think the best word for these things is develop. They develop because of the human beings who just happen to be there at the time"

Patrick Macnee, Actor

"Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog?"

John Lewis, Politician

"No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original"

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Poet

"Another thing I like to do is sit back and take in nature. To look at the birds, listen to their singing, go hiking, camping and jogging and running, walking along the beach, playing games and sometimes being alone with the great outdoors. It's very special to me"

Larry Wilcox, Actor

"I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me"

Gordon Lightfoot, Musician

"In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination"

Colleen McCullough, Author

"Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise"

Tommy Douglas, Clergyman

"The early bird may get the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese"

Jeremy Paxman, Journalist

"I like to express certain things that happen in my life, the joy of spring, the birds singing and young babies coming into the world. You know, the whole thing as well as the part I'm not happy with, the sad part"

Roy Haynes, Musician

"A duck's nest was found today near the trail on the dry open prairie with as far as could be seen no water or marsh near. The bird flew off but could not tell what species. The eggs nine originally"

George Mercer Dawson, Scientist

"Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers"

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet

"I'm the gooney bird that walked to the bank. I'm doing better than most of those guys who said I was crazy"

Jimmy Piersall, Athlete

"There is no bird flu in commercial stocks"

Michael E. Mann, Scientist

"I want the people of New Jersey to jump off a cliff like Kurt Vonnegut so I can show them how to fly. This way, nobody needs to grow any wings, which would be impossible anyway because we're humans and not some kind of bird"

Richie Sambora, Musician

"And as a character, what I found very inspiring about playing Dharma, especially at that time, is that the women on television were more neurotic than they were free. And I thought, this is a rare bird and this is unique on television and I think it's really refreshing"

Jenna Elfman, Actress

"God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest"

P. D. James, Novelist

"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best"

Henry Van Dyke, Poet

"The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds"

Gilbert White, Scientist

"Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place"

Phillip E. Johnson, Educator

"Predators make it much more difficult to find consensus. It's a lot easier to agree about birds and plants than about animals that endanger people and livestock"

Gale Norton, Public Servant

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