“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”
Source: Mr Gilfil's Love Story
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George Eliot 300
English novelist, journalist and translator 1819–1880Related quotes

Two in the Bush (1966)
Context: The attitude of the average person to the world they live in is completely selfish. When I take people round to see my animals, one of the first questions they ask (unless the animal is cute and appealing) is, "what use is it?" by which they mean, "what use is it to them?" To this one can reply "What use is the Acropolis?" Does a creature have to be of direct material use to mankind in order to exist? By and large, by asking the question "what use is it?" you are asking the animal to justify its existence without having justified your own.
Source: Against a Scientific Justification of Animal Experiments, p. 340

Kevin Strom, "All America Must Know the Terror That is Upon Us" http://www.amfirstbooks.com/IntroPages/ToolBarTopics/Articles/Featured_Authors/strom,_kevin/kevin_strom_works/Kevin_Strom_1991-1994/Kevin_A._Strom_19930814-ADV_All_America_Must_Know_the_Terror_That_Is_Upon_Us.html (1993)
Misattributed
Variant: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
“Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question.”
Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 17.

Source: The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism (1919), p. 161