“The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whip-cracking trainer, is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them.”

— Desmond Morris

Source: William Johnson (1990), Rose-Tinted Menagerie, p. 10

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter 1928

Brigid Brophy (1929–1995) novelist, essayist

Source: The Rights of Animals (1965), p. 21

“I was thrilled. I loved the idea of opening everything up, of making old and secret documents available to anybody who wished to see them.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: Final Analysis (1990), p. 183

“Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (7 July 1944)
As I Please (1943–1947)

“In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 208

“A number of abstract ideas, of which we are as a matter of fact unconscious. We do not see them, but we see other things through them.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Source: Speculations (Essays, 1924)

“I watch over you betimes to protect you from wild beasts in human form.”

Ignatius of Antioch (35–108) Patriarch of Antioch and martyr saint

4:2
Epistle to the Smyrnaeans

“From any vocabulary of ideas we can build other ideas by formal combinations of signs. But not any set of ideas will be instructive. One must have the right ideas.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Source: The Emergence Of Probability, 1975, Chapter 15, Inductive Logic, p. 139.

“At one level, this movement on behalf of oppressed farm animals is emotional … Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer. … This idea popularized by Professor Singer — that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species — is one whose time appears to have come. … What we’re seeing now is an interesting moral moment: a grass-roots effort by members of one species to promote the welfare of others. … animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda.”

Nicholas D. Kristof (1959) journalist, author, columnist

" Humanity Even for Nonhumans http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09kristof.html", New York Times, 8 April 2009

“I can assure the Right Honorable Gentleman that in this house I see myself as a colossal god-king, a powerful beast from another realm, blessed with the powers of destruction, and I will run through the Palace of Westminster, lashing at all I encounter with the metal prong-whips. And all shall perish.”

Tristram Hunt (1974) British historian and ex-politician

Speech to the House of Commons, Thu 21 Apr 2016; reported in The Daily Telegraph, Fri 21 Apr 2016, p. 8.

“An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Incoherency of New Ideas
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

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